„
Night Shifts” shows people in Berlin who live in and with the night and asks about the motives for the shift in their life rhythms. Some people work and live at night by choice, while fate has compelled others to do so;
still others use darkness to operate in secret, and some find a new home in it. The film accompanies these people on their paths through the night in order to ascertain the motives and to shed light on the essence of night in today’s big cities through this encounter with them. It was my intention to explore cinematically the tension between a pragmatic routine by which the night is spent or organized and the existential desires and fears that seem to be inevitably evoked. Through lengthy observations and conversations with the people involved,
we discover the conflicts and ambiguities but also the promising freedoms that their way
of life opens up. The moments in which we
can sense despair, fear, and desperation
or the struggle against these things reveal how fragile the night’s freedoms are.
Ivette Löcker
Reviews (in German):
cargo-film
somedirtylaundry
filmtagebuch