paramedics - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Christian Petzold – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 86m

**1/2

A traumatised woman who survives a car crash moves in with a woman living near the crash site, unaware that the second woman is not what she seems – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th

She stares out from a bridge, watches the water go by from underneath it. Returning home, she’s lost her bag. Her partner wants to know where she’s been. Anyway, Debbi (Victoire Laly) and Roger (Marcel Heupermann) are waiting. The four go off in the car. While her partner and Roger swap notes on the song playing on the car sound system, Laura (Paula Beer from Afire, Christian Petzold, 2023; Transit, Christian Petzold, 2019; Never Look Away, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018, Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is distracted, noticing a woman standing in her driveway as they pass. When they stop to check their itinerary, Laura just stands there. She wants to go home, telling partner Jakob (Philip Froissant) she isn’t feeling well.

Driving Laura to the station in the other couple’s car, so she can go home while the other three carry on as planned, Jakob nearly collides with the woman on the drive.… Read the rest

Late Shift
(Heldin)

Director – Petra Blondina Volpe – 2025 – Switzerland – Cert. 12a – 92m

****1/2

An experienced and competent nurse in a hospital in the Western world endures a particularly gruelling night shift – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 1st

There’s a moment of calm at the start of Late Shift… Scrubs going through a laundry system… Floria Lind (Leonie Benesch from September 5, Tim Fehlbaum, 2024; The Teachers’ Lounge, Ilker Çatak, 2023; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) on the night bus to her shift… She and a colleague making small talk whilst changing at the lockers… (The film ends similarly, with a reverse of this bookend, peace after the night shift is over.) And then, they’re on shift.

As soon as Mrs. Lind comes into the ward, the chaos starts. She helps a male colleague (bilingual in German and, for the patient, French) lift the demented Mrs Kuhn (Margherita Schoch) out of her wheelchair so Floria can change the lady’s underwear (and, quite literally, clean her shit off the floor). This evening, it’s Floria, one other nurse (Sonja Riesen), and Amelie (Selma Jamal Aldin), an inexperienced med student. Handing over, a colleague runs through by name the patients on the ward this shift and their various medical needs.… Read the rest