Structured like a documentary but with the escalating tension of a tautly choreographed thriller, Late Shift follows one day in the working life of a nurse in a Swiss public hospital. Floria, expertly portrayed by Leonie Benesch, arrives at work mid-afternoon to discover that the third shift nurse has called in sick, leaving her and her colleague to tend to the two dozen patients on the ward with only the assistance of a student nurse.

Floria’s first patient is an unexpected and out-of-place admission, which throws her routine out of kilter before she has even begun. From that unpromising start, the entire shift becomes a series of tangents and detours, an accumulation of interruptions both minor and significant, trivial and mortal, by people who are frightened, angry, entitled, bewildered, overwhelmed, aggressive, and occasionally – very occasionally – reasonable and accommodating. Floria handles all this with kindness, competence, and a frankly astonishing professionalism, but the strain inevitably begins to tell.

It is not long before the viewer apprehends the constant peril that pervades every moment of the shift, as though the workday has been carefully designed to add danger to every action. Distraction upon distraction scream for the nurse’s attention while she measures out drugs in the dispensary, moves patients to and from surgery, replaces intravenous drips into noncompliant arms, remembers to up a dose, check a heart rate, make an urgent call, find a doctor: breathe. Soon every vial, tablet, and machine is a Chekhov’s pistol. The pressure is relentless, the stakes so high, the conditions of engagement so deeply compromised. When a mistake is finally made, the only surprise is that it hadn’t happened earlier.

Petra Volpe’s perfectly paced direction traces the escalating dread and stress, with the odd well-timed reprieve steadying the nerves before battle is rejoined. The film’s judicious score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch leans unobtrusively into this rising tension, evoking a sense of foreboding that is enhanced by the blue-shifted colour palette.

But Late Shift has no need of tricks or gimmicks to achieve verisimilitude because it is underpinned by utterly authentic source material. The film was inspired by the 2020 memoir of German nurse Madeline Calvelage, Unser Beruf ist nicht das Problem – Es sind die Umstände (Our Profession is Not the Problem – It’s the Circumstances), which traced the effects of escalating nursing shortages over the course of her career. Volpe, who also wrote the script, has shaped a fictional snapshot of a single shift out of that real-life career-in-progress, showing what actually goes on with all the authority of the most penetrating documentary. Late Shift constitutes a powerful argument that fiction can be as insightful and illuminating as non-fiction, with a range of movement that sometimes enables it to go further in revealing the truth.

Late Shift is a masterclass in ‘show, don’t tell’. There is no voice-over, no narration, no proselytising dialogue – only two title cards just before the credits roll that place numbers on the film’s convincing argument that the global nursing workforce is already in serious crisis, and that things are about to get a whole lot worse. The data is alarming, of course, but anyone who still needs convincing by this point has not been paying attention.

Throughout Volpe’s film, it is hard to avoid one thought: this is just one shift – abridged to 92 minutes. Imagine a week. Imagine a year. Imagine doing this for your whole working life. For less than the average wage, with colleagues bailing out – understandably – all around you.

The film’s original German language title, Heldin, means ‘heroine’, a rank more usually associated with the martial rather than the caring professions. But if courage is grace under fire, Floria certainly earns the mantle, substantiating the film’s quiet insistence on another form of heroism, in an underappreciated role that society assigns mostly to women, mostly of the working class.

The Melbourne International Film Festival may be over, but Late Shift is set for an Australian cinematic release. It should be screened in the theatre at Australia’s Parliament House – every politician, adviser, and journalist with an interest in health policy needs to see this film, stat. It should also be the first item of business at the next meeting of Australia’s nine health ministers.

Late Shift demonstrates – eloquently, forcefully, and undeniably – that the system we all depend on just isn’t working. It is crushing those who are the best of us, who labour under punitive conditions to help complete strangers through their most vulnerable moments. Our nurses are at the end of their tether, and their patients are at the edge of risk, whether they know it or not.

Anyone with a loved one in hospital should see Late Shift; anyone with a loved one in the health professions should, too. Anyone who has ever needed healthcare, is currently in healthcare, or will ever be in need of healthcare. Which is to say, all of us.

Late Shift is distributed by Tobis Film and was screened as part of the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival.