This is the second film I have watched in the past week that is an intense and understated drama about the experiences of nurses in hospitals.

Where Adam’s Sake looks specifically at an individual case in a paediatric hospital, Petra Biondina Volpe’s Late Shift follows a nurse as she takes on a shift in an understaffed hospital. Floria (Leonie Benesch) is young and capable, with a broken marriage and child being looked after by her father. You can see this is one shift of many and that it is not a new thing that they are down some nurses that night so she and one other nurse will have to cover the whole floor.

We follow her as she does her first rounds, checking in on each patient. It’s a mixture of repetition and being perhaps the only person that patient has to talk to in a situation that is full of fear and uncertainty. She is constantly being pulled backwards and forwards, feeling rushed because of the demands of family members and knowing that she has too much work to do.

The synopsis made it seem like there is some error that she makes that has repercussions and this is partially true but it is not that kind of film. It made me tense every time she measured out medication, thinking she was going to give a fatal dose to someone, but the forced errors when they come are small but no less affecting because of that.

I liked this because it wasn’t like Volpe was creating some contrived drama to make us feel for Floria. It just shows that sometimes it is the thousand small cuts that come together to be a wound that is hard to mend. There are some beautiful interactions with patients, sometimes just a glimpse as she pops through a door, and the moments where she sits with a patient are particularly magical.

I think it really got me in the feels with the addition of an Anohni (AKA Anthony) and the Johnsons song over the closing scenes, which I think just added this deep level of pathos. It’s hard not to be affected if you have ever sat with someone in hospital, particularly a dying parent, and you truly understand what a lifeline nurses are.

Like with Omaha, there is a little bit of information after the last scene that gives context as to why this story is an important one right now. It adds a weight to it that brought me to tears.