Miss Flicks

Interview: Petra Volpe shines a light on nurses’ working conditions in Late Shift

Late Shift follows a nurse named Floria (Leonie Benesch) throughout a single shift at her short-staffed hospital in Switzerland.

It sounds like it could be rather mundane, but it is nothing of the sort. This workplace thriller is gripping from start to finish, and quite a stressful experience. Floria has an impossible amount of tasks to do and patients to see, and the jobs keep stacking up. The patients are getting impatient with the wait, everything is a top priority, and she simply can’t be in two places at once.

You will come away from the film having more respect for the underappreciated and overworked nurses and wondering why anyone would want to be a nurse, given their working conditions. And this is exactly what Swiss writer-director Petra Volpe set out to achieve with her film.

Miss Flicks recently spoke with Petra about working with Leonie, ensuring accuracy, and how her film offers a counterbalance to the way nurses are often sidelined in film and TV. Here’s our conversation:

I loved Late Shift. It was so intense, I feel like I didn’t breathe for most of the movie.

Good – then we succeeded! That’s what we wanted.

When you watch your finished film, what is the scene or sequence that you’re most proud of?

I think I’m proud of the overall effect that you just described. That we really managed to create a movie that’s a physical experience. I think that’s what we set out to do. We really wanted to (give) people a visceral experience and forget that they’re in a movie, but they feel like they’re doing the job of the nurse. When my whole team realised that we – with all the means of cinema – we managed to create that effect, that made us very proud.

And I think that the nurses say, ‘OK, we don’t see a mistake.’ If you celebrate a job, if you put the work of nurses at the centre of the narrative, you can’t allow yourself to make any mistakes. Nurses are a very, very, very strict audience, and we really wanted to create a love letter to them and celebrate their work and the work of care, and you can’t allow yourself any mistakes because then you’ve kind of failed. So we really wanted to make sure that everything was very accurate and very precise, and like the way it goes, so when the first nurses came and said, ‘This is exactly my day and I didn’t see a mistake,’ we were very proud.

To get that accuracy, did you have consultants on set or did you shadow nurses? How did that work?

All of it. This topic was in my mind for many, many years, even before Covid, because I lived with a nurse, but I didn’t find the form, but then I read a book by a German nurse, Madeline Calvelage, where she describes just one single shift, and it read like a thriller. Just reading her normal everyday shift, my heart started to palpitate. That was kind of the starting point for me. I thought I’m just gonna make a movie that’s just one single shift, and you can show all that’s wrong in nursing today, in the circumstances that the nurses have to work under, you can show it in one single shift.

So she became a consultant, but then there was a Swiss nurse who consulted, who constantly read the script. I did dozens of interviews with nurses and went to the hospital myself. Then my DP and I went to the hospital and worked with the nurses for three days to figure out the rhythm and the pace of their work. My actress was in a hospital for a week, and then we had a constant consultant on the set who also was Leonie’s coach. She’s an ICU nurse who worked in intensive care for 25 years. She was always with me and the actress. She controlled every take, and she made sure everything was really accurate. So there were a lot of people consulting us because you can’t do it without (them).

I was so impressed by how precise and specific Leonie’s movements were when she’s moving around the medicine room, inserting an IV into an arm, etc. She looks like a real nurse; I truly believed it. For those scenes, was there choreography or just a lot of practice to get those movements exactly right?

Well, it was scripted very precisely. Almost every movement is in the script, but then, of course, Leonie had to practice every movement, so everything was really… we staged it really like a dance choreography. Also, her walking down the corridor, going around the corner, entering a room (and) disinfecting her hands, we saw it really like an athletic choreography, and that’s how we approached it. But it was in the script and then we practised it really, really well over and over again until it looked really like it’s in one flow. And Leonie, of course, she’s an amazing actress; she has such high intelligence. She really memorised these sequences in such high tempo. She had her dialogue down and the rhythm of the scene. It was not easy to bring the activity of a nurse and the dialogue and the human interaction – there were so many layers to her acting that she had to combine, and you can only do it with someone who has a really high physical kind of understanding of acting.

I read that you knew she was your Floria from her first line on Zoom. What was it about Leonie on that Zoom that made you like, ‘She’s the one’?

I think I just believed her, you know. I believed her to be a nurse. I didn’t think of her acting. She didn’t act to be a nurse. I felt she said it, and I could see her in a room with a patient, and I believed her. She has that kind of naturalness; she’s very grounded, there’s something very unartificial about her, there’s something very down-to-earth and very pragmatic. I was looking for an actress who isn’t sentimental, who isn’t sweet, who has this pragmatism that I observed in the nurses. This kind of like warmth, warmth that’s not sentimental, and that’s not so easy to find in an actress. So, for me, it was really lucky that she became our Floria.

The camera is always following her; she’s constantly on the go. It’s very dynamic and fast-paced. Was that achieved during the shoot or in the edit?

During the shoot. We already had a very clear concept. In the beginning, we have long shots because she’s starting her shift, she’s motivated, she’s young, she has strength, and we really want to show that despite all of these things, she cannot succeed because the system won’t allow her. It’s a game that’s pitted against her. No matter how strong or motivated she is, in the end, she cannot split herself in two. So the antagonism in the story is really time. We wanted to reflect that with the camera: That in the beginning, it’s really very flowy, it’s very dynamic, it’s in a good rhythm, and how little by little, it falls apart because of the simple fact that one person cannot be in two places at the same time.

Of course, it was in the camerawork, but then the editing, it’s one continuation. Also, to create that effect, we needed them to find a rhythm in the editing of balancing the fast pace with the more emotional moments. That happened very much in the editing room. All the crafts really have to come together to create the effect the movie has now.

The statistics at the end really shocked me. But also, they’re quite understandable, given what we’ve just seen her go through. Do you see your film as a call to action to improve working conditions for nurses?

Yes, definitely. I’m aware that a movie can’t change the world, but it is a call to action, and it’s a movie that I hope will raise awareness. In Switzerland and Germany, the movie was a very big success; a lot of people went to see it, and a lot of nurses felt themselves seen for the first time. But we also had a screening with parliamentarians in Switzerland. Not a lot came, which is also symptomatic, that the issue isn’t treated with the same urgency as it should be. But the unions used the film, hospitals showed the film, so yeah, it is a call to action, and I hope that it raises awareness in people. If not in politicians, then at least I hope it creates better patients, who have more patience for the nurses.

I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there’s a British miniseries called This Is Going to Hurt that came out a couple of years ago. The approach and tone are very different, but it achieves the same thing of showing that nurses are overworked and underappreciated. I just wondered if you’ve seen that as well?

I haven’t seen it. I just recently saw The Pitt, that I really loved. Also, in a lot of these hospital series, I don’t know how it is in This Is Going to Hurt, (but) it’s always the doctors in the centre of the narrative. I think there’s hardly any shows or movies where you actually see how absolutely crucial the nurse is, that she should be in the centre of the narrative. I mean, the doctors are super important, no question, but the nurse is equally important.

There’s also a distortion in media on how nurses are shown. They’re usually shown to help the doctor or they’re in the background hanging up an IV, but actually, for the outcome, for the patient outcome, the nurse is absolutely vital and absolutely important. Because she’s the one who steps to your bed and sees that something has changed in your status and alerts the doctor. The doctor comes five minutes in the morning and in the evening, but she’s always there. I think it’s a complete distortion of the job, how it’s seen in media and in society. It’s seen as helping work, but it’s more than just helping the doctors. It’s much, much more. I think we also wanted to create a counter-narrative to this and really put her at the centre of the narrative and show how it’s actually, in the real world, what meaning nurses have for us and the outcome for patients.

We also wanted to show very little of her personal life, you know, she just wants to do a good job, and the way the hospital works, or the way healthcare works today, she’s prevented from doing a good job. And it will harm us the most, so good work conditions for nurses are in our best interests because we’re all potential patients. And in everybody’s life, nurses are often the first and last person who touches us, so they should be really high in our personal hierarchy and respect.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length

Late Shift is in U.K. and Irish cinemas from Friday 1st August. Check out my review here.