The original title may be a bit obvious, but there’s no doubt that the film is a thoroughly convincing and frustrating look into the overwhelming situation for understaffed healthcare workers, the people we all rely on throughout many stages of our lives.

Done in a way that reminded me of Boiling Point (2022), this is a tense, meticulously researched drama where we follow a nurse on her late shift, tending to the mounting needs of patients and their loved ones.

Well directed and acted, the film cleverly turns every detail of Floria’s work into a race against the clock.

2025-Switzerland-Germany. 91 min. Color. Written and directed by Petra Volpe. Cast: Leonie Benesch (Floria Lind), Sonja Riesen (Bea Schmid), Selma Aldin (Amelie Afshar), Urs Bihler, Jürg Plüss, Margherita Schoch. 

Trivia: Original title: Heldin.

Last word: “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.” (Volpe, Miss Flicks)