In Petra Volpe’s Late Shift, Floria (Leonie Benesch) spends a very overloaded late shift at a Swiss hotel trying desperately to tend to all of her patients with seemingly no support as they all demand much more of her than she physically has time for her, even as she seeks to give them every bit of her attention all at once.
Awards Buzz spoke with editor Hansjörg Weißbrich about establishing and maintaining the sense of claustrophobia and inescapability that lasts through the film:
“It’s an understaffed hospital and it’s very much about that she needs to do everything by herself. She just has one colleague on that shift because another one got sick and there was no replacement, so it’s a lot about her personal experience and the experience of one nurse. There are a lot of nurses in the world in the same situation, and that was the starting point for the director, Petra Volpe, because she had lived for a long time with a nurse and got a lot of experience and feedback from her. This is a problem throughout Europe, that we don’t have enough nurses. I think it’s basically a worldwide problem, and it will become a much bigger issue than it already is today. The ultimate goal was to give the audience a very close feeling for what it means for the individual who is doing that job. There are a lot of nurses who are very dedicated and want to do a good job, but the circumstances just don’t allow them to do a good job. I think that there are a lot of scenes in our film where we highlight exactly that.”
Watch the video above to hear his take on this year’s crop of very good but very long movies.
Late Shift is on the Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature, representing Switzerland, and will be released in New York City by Music Box Films on March 20th, 2026.
