It’s Ferragosto, Italy’s mid-August holiday, in a practically deserted hospital in Naples. Two nurses, Angelo and Salvatore, are on shift when a desperately ill patient is wheeled in. With his seasoned eye, Angelo knows at once that Mr. Caputo won’t last the night. Salvatore happens to loathe Angelo and decides to bet on the opposite outcome. The winner of the bet will nab the top holiday slot: Christmas vacation. Angelo takes up the challenge. From that moment on, Salvatore will spend the night trying to keep Mr. Caputo alive, while Angelo will play dirty to make sure he wins the bet. That night, it’s anything goes at their hospital, from the nurses’ cheap shots to doctors on cocaine and suspicious characters lurking in the ward.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES.
High Stakes – A Night on the Ward is not only a film inspired by Italy’s extraordinary tradition of comedy films, which Monicelli defined as ‘tragedies that make you laugh’; it also contains two features that dictate the story and the setting: the unity of time and place. All in one night, and all in one hospital. This apparently theatrical formula allowed us to draw on a cast that had obvious artistic and comedic talents, yet was also prepared, expert, and well aware of what was required. Working in a protected environment, shielded from external factors and random events, the actors were able to repeatedly rehearse their moves and lines with great precision and coordination between them, like a single body. The eye of the camera threaded through the warren of hallways, only rarely replacing the gaze of the actors, but studying their distortions mercilessly, only to abandon them to their fates, like a watchful God who doesn’t intervene.