Turno de Guardia, tribute to healthcare heroes
With very few exceptions, everyone has been to a hospital at some point, and many have spent a considerable amount of time there. The film Turno de Guardia, directed and written by Petra Volpe, avoids the temptation to focus on the emergency room, a subject that has been dealt with a thousand times in films and television series. Instead, it prefers to address the normality, if it can be called that, of the most common hospitalisation and treatment on the ward.
It features a truly exceptional actress, Leonie Benesch, who immerses herself completely in the role of Floria, a nurse who practises her profession with passion and rigour. Even in the midst of chaos, she always listens to her patients and responds immediately to urgent calls... or almost always, because everyday reality is often unpredictable.
The entire plot unfolds over the course of a shift, which on the day in question coincides with the absence of a colleague on an entire ward and too many patients, so as the shift progresses, Floria finds herself increasingly engaged in a desperate race against time.
Without resorting to sentimentality, Volpe composes a narrative that also avoids the emotional, except to describe some of the reactions of the patients, whom he presents in a mosaic as varied as that which is found daily in any hospital worthy of the name. The establishment has no specific urban location or setting, except that the original language suggests it is in German-speaking Switzerland. However, the daily routine is common to any European public hospital, including patients who attend privately.
It is certainly a film that pays tribute to nursing staff, making clear their essential role in the shaping of any advanced healthcare system. The film leaves little room for the personal problems of these nurses and focuses almost entirely on those affecting the patients, sketched out succinctly but with great mastery.
We are therefore presented with a realistic and deeply human film that takes a close and respectful look at the world of nursing. The camera follows Floria relentlessly, sometimes with intense sequence shots. We accompany the protagonist throughout a shift that is as demanding as it is intense, in which this heroine faces challenges and critical situations that test her sense of commitment, her humanity and her vocation. In other words, each of us, tempted by personal evocation, could name the person who accompanied and cared for us at some point in our lives.
As for Leonie Benesch, with her extraordinary performance, she has been nominated for the second time as best actress at the European Film Academy's EFA Awards. The film has also been nominated for an Oscar and is a candidate for a Goya for best European film.