In this post, I compare the protagonists of “Late Shift (Heldin, 2025)” and “A Fantastic Woman (2017)”.  These two films belong to two different genres as far away as the land they were made in.  ‘Late Shift’ is a Swiss film in German language, while ‘A Fantastic Woman’ is a Chilean drama film in Spanish.  The central characters, Floria in ‘Late Shift ‘and Marina in ‘A Fantastic Woman’ are so vividly realised by director Petra Volpe and director Sebastian Lelio, respectively that they become studies in human endurance under adversity.    

Before I delve into the comparison, I would like to lay the groundwork by briefly describing what these two films are about, for a better appreciation by the readers.

“Late Shift / Heldin”, a 2025 Hospital Drama that revolves around Floria (played by Leonie Benesch), is about a dedicated nurse navigating a severely understaffed surgical ward in a hospital during a late shift.  Despite the punishing rigour of staffing the third floor of the hospital with only one other nurse and a reluctant first year student drafted in to assist, Floria puts on a façade that cleverly masks the stress underneath.  She fights to bring warmth and humanity to the patients under her care despite the pressure in her growing by the minute.  She faces sharp barbs from her patients for the “apparent lack of care” with a smiling demeanour, while firmly reining in the patients who go astray. As the day goes on, her shift turns into an emotionally gripping tale of endurance and a race against time.

“A Fantastic Woman” centres on Marina, brilliantly portrayed by the actor Daniela Vega.  After her partner dies, the suspicion squarely falls on Marina, who is fighting a hostile society and a grieving family determined to erase her relationship with Orlando and treats her like a pervert, a criminal and an embarrassment.  They lock her out of her apartment, take away her dog and prevent her from attending the wake. In short, her very existence is dismissed.  

Dignity Under Siege

The thematic core of both characters is a battle for basic human dignity against an uncaring environment. 

Floria, a cisgender nurse, is crushed by an indifferent broken healthcare system that treats healthcare workers and the patients like checkboxes on a production line.

Marina, on the other hand is a trans woman fighting a hostile, cis-normative society and a grieving family for her basic right to exist and mourn.

There are two scenes in the films that bring out the breaking point of a dignity under siege.

“The Watch Toss” in ‘Late Shift’: Reassertion of Humanity 

A wealthy patient, Severin played by Jürg Plüss, who confronts her on the quality of service rendered, demands her to bring a pot of tea of his choice. As other priorities intervene before Floria can serve the tea in his individual room (unlike the other patients who are interned on a twin-sharing basis), he is seen timing her on the stopwatch of his luxury watch and he tells her that she brought the tea after over an hour.  This is the tipping point of the film—Floria snatches the watch, opens the window and tosses it out.  Severin is shocked and tells her that she threw out the window a 40000-Euros watch. 

Severin’s act of timing her breaks the professional façade of Floria, ironically acting as a vent to the pent-up stress.  Realising her folly, she goes in search of the watch in the bushes only to return empty-handed and tell Severin that she could not find his watch but she would pay for it, though it would take several years for her to do so.

The wealthy patient represents the ultimate form of systemic cruelty, who rather sees a servant in a nurse’s garb, whose labour he has purchased.  He strips her of her professional identity by timing her and reduces her to a machine that has failed to deliver in time.

By throwing out the watch, she has rejected Severin’s attempt at controlling her labour, her time and her dignity. Floria’s act of tossing the watch out the window is a primal act of defiance.  

“The Car Climb Scene” in ‘A Fantastic Woman’: Refusing to be Erased

Though the two films are of different genres and the central characters are poles apart in the role they play and their standing in society, the car climb scene in the movie can be considered the cinematic cousin to the watch-toss scene in Late Shift. Until the scene, Marina was treated by Orlando’s family like a perverted criminal and an embarrassment to the family, whose existence was only to be wished away. 

Marina’s treatment by Orlando’s family is mirrored by the hostility of society at large. Even detective Adriana insists on a physical examination simply because Marina failed to appear when summoned—a revealing example of the suspicion with which she is viewed.

When she is denied access to her dog and prevented from seeing Orlando’s body, her emotions boil over in a defiant act: she climbs atop Orlando’s family’s car, peers through the window and demand her dog back. 

Studies in Human Endurance

The tipping points behind both acts in the films are total indifference of the system to the persons who are either taken for granted and relegated to the status of a mere labour without any emotions or the unacknowledged third gender that does not deserve any dignity, rather only to be suspected, scoffed at and dismissed.  The scenes show how cold, institutionalised and prejudiced environments strip away empathy. 

The two protagonists do not win any legal battle, nor their sufferings end.  They are powerful because they both look into the eyes of their oppressors and say, “You will not diminish me”. 

The two films are more than compelling dramas; they are cinematic excavations of how much the human mind can withstand when pushed to the brink—questioning sanity, identity and even survival.  The watch-toss and car-climb scenes are cathartic outbursts that expose the tragic absurdity in the societies their protagonists inhabit.