People may face a shortage of 13 million by the end of the decade. Swiss director Petra Volpe imagined the consequences of a single lost shift on a busy night in one and ended up turning one that unfortunately
The destruction of the health care sector
With Late Shift, Volpe wanted to shed light on the forefront of the impending disaster in the field of healthcare through the eyes of dedicated, exhausted Floria. The young nurse, played by German actress Leoni Benek, first shows a stunt thanks to her work, but with life and death.
The self -sacrifice of care
Arriving at her shift cheerful and full of energy and devoting time to ask her colleague about her recent vacation, Floria soon learns that another nurse has declared ill.
The Swiss Volpe says she chose the German title of the film Heldin because she got a mythical term often used for warriors and applied it to the bravery and self -sacrifice of care.
“This work, which is extremely complex and emotionally charged, is completely undervalued in our societies,” Volpe says. “In addition it is a female job – 80% of people who do this job are women.”
The problem is not the profession but the conditions
“The project is extremely complicated and emotionally charged” … Leonie Benesch in Late Shift.
Volpe was inspired by a long -standing roommate working as a nurse and the autobiographical novel “Our profession is not the problem – it is the conditions” of former nurse Madeline Calvelage from Germany, who advised her for the script.
“My heart was beating loudly from the first chapter and I thought – this is read as a thriller,” Volpe says. “But in this stress you find the most tender, human moments.”
The film revolves around the escalating and competitive needs of patients in a hospital chamber, with different medical and emotional requirements hiding behind each door and communicated to health staff from the call bell in each room.
Benesch’s career already includes roles in The Crown and Babylon Berlin series, as well as roles in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon films, the September 5 drama for the attacks on the Munich Olympics and the German Oscar -winning film The Teachers’ Lounge.
The weight to the nurses
She says that the common element of her most recent characters is “people who burn for what they do.” But he notes that it was rare in television medical series to see nurses and their daily achievements.
“We are used to seeing doctors as heroes, while in the background a nurse can hang a serum bag, drink coffee or have a relationship with the senior doctor,” says Benesch. “Before that, it was not clear to me how much of the real medical responsibility is borne by the shoulders of the nurses.”
Benesch, who studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama, said she passed several shifts following real nurses to a Swiss hospital to learn the “choreography” of interactions between staff and patients, as well as manual skills. “I wanted the real nurses to not be able to discern my difference with them,” he says.
Movie – Success in German -speaking Europe
The Late Shift film sparked strong discussions on health policy reform and proved to be critical and commercially successful in German -speaking Europe, even surpassing the latest Bridget Jones film in Swiss cinema.
In the nurses the applause of the public at the Berlin Festival
Nursing staff from various Berlin hospitals are protesting in front of Zoo Palast, on the sidelines of the premiere of the film Heldin in February.
At the world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February, several nurses were invited to appear in the red carpet uniforms and go on stage after the screening to accept the applause of the public. A few days before the general elections in Germany, some were holding placards with the slogan #wirsindfloria (we are Floria).
One of the guests was 47 -year -old Ingo Böing, who worked in hospitals for a quarter of the century and is now a member of the German Nursing Professionals, who is struggling for better working conditions for health care workers. “It was incredibly moving,” he says of the film’s ceremony. “Seeing many of the scenes I thought,” Wow, that’s really things. “
The vicious cycle of nursing
Böing says that Late Shift convincing the “vicious cycle” of nursing, in which people working on the limits of their powers receive sick leave without notice, leaving those who appear at work with an even more difficult task. “It’s the feeling of trying to meet so many needs at the same time and not succeed,” he adds.
Waiting lists in hospitals
He says waiting lists, such as those used by NHS in Britain, although frustrating for patients, would help hospitals in Germany to better prioritize their priorities, while preventing their excessive burden.
Franziska Aurich, a 28 -year -old, working in an oncology wing at Charité Hospital in Berlin, also found the film “Very Cut to Reality”. When asked what she would advise Floria, Aurich replied: “I would tell her to get back to work tomorrow, because like she, I can’t imagine doing anything else in my life. But to be written in a trade union, so that it doesn’t have as many shifts like this. “
Volpe: The movie, erotic letter to nurses
Volpe, who shares her time between Berlin and New York, says she was pleased to see nurses go to the film and hopes that this will make the rest of the audience better. “Nurses should be at the top of the social hierarchy, but we live in a world where exactly the opposite happens,” he says. “This film is an erotic letter to the profession.”
While the film plays in Europe’s shaken but still intact social infrastructure, Volpe said in the US how Donald Trump’s drastic cuts in Medicaid, which serves mainly poor and disabled, threatened to harm the most vulnerable. “You see a great deal of cruelty in all these measures,” he says.
“Elon Musk said he considers empathy as the biggest problem of our time, which is of course completely monstrous. The least thing an artist can do is react to it. Sooner or later, we will all depend on that person who stands next to our bed. “
Source: The Guardian
