The healthcare disaster is on numerous artistic’s thoughts as of late: There are at the least 4 new medical TV exhibits in 2025, together with The Pitt, Pulse, St. Denis Medical and Berlin ER. Science skepticism, insurance coverage battles and understaffed hospitals are usually not solely home themes, they’re worldwide points.
In The Late Shift, writer-director Petra Volpe (The Divine Order) explores the truth of a nurse in an understaffed hospital in her dwelling nation of Switzerland. The movie is Switzerland’s entry within the non-English-language class, which has a robust lineup this yr, in addition to being a contender in lots of different classes.
Primarily based in Berlin and New York, Volpe spoke to us in regards to the frustration and heroism (the unique German movie title Heldin means heroine) of the individuals who care for us throughout our most troublesome moments, and the way the themes within the movie took a sudden private flip throughout manufacturing.
What’s the origin story of Late Shift?
My unique curiosity within the matter did come up whereas residing with a nurse. She was in contact with existential questions every day. It was her job to cope with dying and worry and kin and sickness, all these large taboo subjects of our society. I used to be in awe of that. We take these folks with no consideration. I used to be in search of a type to inform a narrative about caretakers or nurses for fairly a very long time. I didn’t fairly discover the angle. Then I learn a guide by the German nurse Madeline Calvelage through which she describes only a shift, and simply after two pages, my coronary heart was already racing. I felt this reads like a thriller. That gave me the style or type for the movie. Madeleine turned a advisor on the challenge and I did many interviews with nurses in Switzerland, Germany, and within the U.S.
How did you’re employed with actress Leonie Benesch to make every little thing look so actual and genuine?
Leonie is an extremely bodily actress and likewise very pure. I beloved her a lot in The Trainer’s Lounge however didn’t dare to ask her, as a result of I believed she wouldn’t have an interest to play one other skilled in a one-location setting. After a large casting I nonetheless hadn’t discovered my nurse, so I requested her. I feel what appealed to her was the physicality. The nurse is all the time in movement, it’s mainly an motion film and really choreographed. We needed to break down all of the actions a nurse does. We had a coach that educated Leonie like an athlete. She would take syringes and the IVs dwelling and work with them within the lodge room, whereas watching TV till she might deal with them blindly. She was additionally in a hospital for per week shadowing nurses. My DP Judith Kaufmann and I have been there to movie and to actually perceive the rhythm and tempo of nurses.
The place did you ultimately shoot?
We shot in an outdated hospital in Switzerland that was going to be torn down. Sadly, every little thing had simply been emptied out and shipped to Ukraine to help the hospitals there, so my manufacturing designer needed to discover all of the beds which we bought from Germany, however they wouldn’t match via the doorways in Switzerland…We wished the hospital to look good. The means are there in Switzerland. It’s about priorities: if there’s not sufficient nurses, state-of-the-art know-how doesn’t assist. We wished to point out what an understaffed ward means for the sufferers and the nurses.
Why do you suppose we see numerous new medical themed content material this yr?
Medical exhibits make for good leisure as a result of it’s excessive drama, and fairly often about life and dying. However in media, how nurses are portrayed could be very distorted and sometimes they don’t seem to be the primary characters. The docs are. In actuality, nurses have an incredible accountability. They’re the people who find themselves the closest to the sufferers. They monitor them and get to know all their tales. The response to the film in Germany and Switzerland and likewise different European international locations within the nursing neighborhood was great as a result of they felt represented and seen. It’s very symptomatic additionally that nursing is so under-appreciated as a result of it’s historically a girl’s job.
Do you hope the movie will assist deliver change for caretakers?
Sure, I hope that the movie will help nurses of their combat for higher work circumstances and respect. Throughout COVID, we have been very conscious of how related they have been, after which we forgot it once more. Cinema is a technique to create empathy and consciousness. The unions in Switzerland have been utilizing the movie as a cry to arms, to mobilize their members and the folks at giant to combat alongside them. The nurses in the USA I’m following on Instagram — they’re on the coronary heart of pushing again towards what’s taking place now with the cuts to Medicaid as a result of they’re extraordinarily affected by it. What struck me most although, is the ethical damage, because it’s known as in care work. The largest difficulty isn’t essentially getting paid extra. What’s hardest for nurses who actually need to assist folks, is once they really feel they’ll’t assist as a result of the system prevents them to take action.
Your mom was hospitalized in the course of the capturing of Late Shift. How did this have an effect on your work on the movie?
It was extraordinarily emotional. My mom was additionally on a [gastroenterology] ward, like within the movie. I might go to her within the morning and speak to the nurses and docs there. I might discover myself being like one of many kin in my movie after which return to set and shoot a scene with comparable dialogue. Actuality and fiction began to combine. It was very scary to see my mom so susceptible and I used to be very grateful for each type of kindness she skilled within the hospital. I didn’t take it with no consideration as a result of I knew these nurses are so confused and so they took the time to speak to my mom and clarify every little thing to me and my mom what was going to occur.
Your DP, manufacturing designer and composer are all feminine. Was {that a} acutely aware determination?
I work with numerous ladies as a result of I feel the ladies I work with are the most effective artists. I additionally labored with my producer Reto Schaerli for a few years. We’re a really shut knit crew. My DP Judith Kaufmann shot all my movies and is concerned very early on. I run numerous concepts by her. For this movie, I had a transparent imaginative and prescient that it wanted to be a single perspective. It’s solely nurse Floria and we’re fully in her world. We’re not giving the sufferers a perspective, as a result of we actually need to present what it implies that Floria can solely be together with her sufferers for so long as she will and never give the viewers extra time with sufferers than she has. The intention for the entire crew was additionally easy methods to make the movie a bodily expertise. We wished folks to really feel bodily exhausted after the film, like they themselves labored a shift. And the way can we obtain that in 95 minutes when it takes place in actuality over ten hours. The place is the drama and the place are the issues we don’t usually take into consideration once we take into consideration nurses, like the drugs: nurses don’t simply go into the pharmacy and come out a capsule. It’s often a course of. It struck me after I went to watch them, how lengthy it takes and the way mentally centered they must be to not make errors measuring smallest quantities and diluting them in different smallest quantities.
What are you engaged on now?
I shot Frank & Louis proper after this movie and I’m at the moment in postproduction. It’s my English-language debut. I’ve been engaged on the story about Alzheimer’s and dementia in an American males’s jail for ten years. It’s impressed by a program within the males’s colony in San Luis Obispo, California. We shot the film final winter and spring with Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Morgan within the principal roles. I’m very excited to complete it by the top of the yr and have it begin its journey into the world in 2026.