Leonie Benesch Superb as a Tireless Nurse

There’s an apt bluntness to the English-language title of Petra Volpe’s new feature. It says what’s necessary and gets the job done, not unlike the nurse at the center of Late Shift. It’s worth noting, though, that the Swiss-German film’s original title, Heldin, though similarly to-the-point, forgoes the just-the-facts modesty and cops to something that fuels the movie no less than the nuts and bolts of 21st century medical care: awed admiration. It means “heroine,” and there’s no question that Floria Lind, the devoted pro played with prodigious fluency by Leonie Benesch in this tense and immersing workplace drama, is as valiant as the most epically challenged protagonist in an action saga.

Volpe (The Divine Order) and her lead actor move through the hospital with a go-go-go energy that’s thoroughly gripping, never forced. Even before her shift begins, Floria’s engaged but terse conversation in the locker room with fellow nurse Bea (Sonja Riesen) makes it clear that she’s not one for watercooler blather even on the best of days. So too does the racing pulse of the score by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch (All of Us Strangers). But this turns out to be one of the most hectic and trying of shifts: The surgical ward is at capacity, the nursing crew understaffed, and an emergency operation claims the attention of an on-call doctor.

“It’s just two of us today,” Floria offers by way of explanation nearly every time a patient or one of their loved ones complains about the lag in attention. Long before she’s apologizing, though, Floria jumps right into action, helping a colleague who’s ending his shift with the inglorious task of changing a disoriented woman’s “incontinence pants.” From there she’s off and running, making the rounds through the icy blue-green labyrinth of hallways with her cart of computers, machines and medicine. Production designer Beatrice Schulz reoutfitted an empty hospital to create the set, a superb balance of clinical refinement and functionality. Within this space, as DP Judith Kaufmann (The Teachers’ Lounge, Corsage) turns the camera into Floria’s sympathetic companion, the fluent choreography of performers and camerawork is an exceptional feat.

Floria’s interactions with other staff and patients give the movie its beating heart. Inspired by Madeline Calvelage’s autobiographical novel Our Profession Is Not the Problem. It’s the Circumstances, Volpe has surrounded Benesch with a combination of professional actors, first-time performers and actual medical personnel. Over the hours, as afternoon gives way to evening, Floria soothes a man from Burkina Faso (Urbain Guiguemdé) who’s undergoing tests, nervous and “all alone.” She offers words of wisdom to a middle-aged woman (Doris Schefer) who’s anxious about leaving her dying father’s bedside, and does what she can to quiet the nerves of a man (Urs Bihler) as he restlessly awaits test results (she knows the bad news but isn’t authorized to share it).

Just as the propulsive screenplay wastes not a moment — Volpe provides a few quick brushstrokes about Floria’s home life as a single mother — Floria too wastes no words or gestures. But she knows when to pause, whether it’s to sing a calming lullaby to a woman with dementia (Margherita Schoch) or to listen when a returning cancer patient (Lale Yavas), exhausted by the tests and surgeries and treatments, speaks with aching candor about her options.

A series of disasters begin to unravel Floria’s composure, until she loses her cool entirely with a wealthy patient (Jürg Plüss) who, spewing demands and sarcasm from his private room, feels at first like a cliché. But his and Floria’s ultimate conversation in the movie turns out to be one of its most wrenching. Every step of the way, Hansjörg Weissbrich’s nimble editing is in sync with the story’s shifting emotional texture, and the awareness that, in this sterile setting for bodies and souls, mortality is never far from the equation.

Closing title cards warn of a shortage of nurses in Switzerland and beyond. Paying tribute to an underappreciated profession, Late Shift offers a portrait of workaday courage, not least when Floria mouths off to a surgeon on behalf of a patient who feels abandoned. Whatever your views of pain management protocols and pharmacological practices, such advocacy is a precious thing.

The wiry and intense physicality that Benesch brought to her role as a newbie schoolteacher in The Teachers’ Lounge — a kind of frankness and presence that’s evident too in her mostly deskbound role in September 5 — finds new depths in her Late Shift performance. Floria’s every move is that of a benign fury: her confident stride through the ward, the ritual of her muscular applications of hand sanitizer countless times a day, her practiced handling and application of catheters, needles and syringes. (According to production notes, Benesch completed an internship at a Swiss hospital to prepare for the role.) From her sharp scolding of a student nurse to her own tears of self-recrimination, Floria is a full-blooded and beautifully etched character and, yes, a heroine.