Director: Petra Biondina Volpe
Cast: Leonie Benesch, Alireza Bayram, Jürg Plüss, Jasmin Mattei, Lale Yavaş
Late Shift is a 2025 Swiss-German drama directed by Petra Biondina Volpe, set entirely within a single hospital night shift. Running 91 minutes, this tightly wound workplace film follows a dedicated nurse as the pressures of an understaffed ward push her — and those around her — toward a breaking point that feels both inevitable and devastating.
What is Late Shift about?
Flora is a skilled, compassionate nurse on a surgical ward who arrives for what should be a routine overnight shift. The ward is short-staffed, the pace relentless, and the patients' needs unceasing. As the hours pass, small missteps accumulate, tensions between colleagues flare, and the gap between what the healthcare system demands and what any human being can actually deliver grows impossible to ignore. Flora gives everything she has — her training, her empathy, her composure — yet the night keeps tilting further off-balance. What begins as a familiar professional grind slowly escalates into a crisis that forces a raw, unsparing reckoning with the limits of care itself.
Cast & crew
Director Petra Biondina Volpe is the Swiss filmmaker behind the acclaimed The Divine Order (2017). Lead actress Leonie Benesch brings a grounded, physical intensity to Flora, while Alireza Bayram provides one of the film's key supporting performances. The ensemble — including Jürg Plüss, Jasmin Mattei, Lale Yavaş, Andreas Beutler, Urs Bihler, and Sonja Riesen — fills the ward with lived-in detail.
Context & significance
For Persian-speaking viewers in the diaspora, Late Shift carries particular resonance. Many Iranian immigrants have worked in healthcare — as nurses, physicians, lab technicians — navigating systems that are simultaneously demanding and indifferent to individual limits. The film's portrait of a conscientious professional overwhelmed by institutional failure is universally legible, yet it speaks with specific force to those who have experienced the weight of professional duty in an adopted country. Alireza Bayram's presence in a Swiss-German production also signals a quietly significant moment: an Iranian-heritage actor in a mainstream European ensemble drama. The film is available with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, making it fully accessible across generations of diaspora viewers.
Where & how to watch
Late Shift is available now on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles. Watch on your browser, connected TV, or mobile phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download required. Subscribe and cancel anytime.