
Petra Biondina Volpe
Directing
Biography
Petra Biondina Volpe (born 6 August 1970) is a Swiss screenwriter and film director. She is best known for directing The Divine Order. In 2025, she directed Late Shift (Heldin), a Switzerland, Germany co-production film selected at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival in Berlinale Special Gala section, which will have its World premiere in February 2025 and later will be released on 27 February 2025 in Swiss theaters. Filming began in April 2025 on Volpe's English-language debut film, with the working title Frank & Louis, starring Kingsley Ben-Adir.
Known For

Heidi, is an eight-year-old Swiss orphan who is given by her aunt to her mountain-dwelling grandfather. She is then stolen back by her aunt from her grandfather to live in the wealthy Sesemann household in Frankfurt, Germany as a companion to Klara, a sheltered, disabled girl in a wheelchair. Heidi is unhappy but makes the best of the situation, always longing for her grandfather.
Heidi

No description available.
Kulturzeit

Dedicated nurse Floria navigates the relentless pace of her hospital’s understaffed surgical ward with humanity and warmth. As her overnight shift intensifies, she is pushed to the brink in a race against time.
Late Shift

1945 Zero hour. Europe is reduced to rubble. Thirty million displaced and uprooted people. At the heart of this ravaged continent lies Switzerland. This small neutral country, which has been all but spared by the war, becomes a hub for Nazi war criminals, Allied Secret Services and Holocaust survivors.
Labyrinth of Peace

Frank, serving a life sentence, takes a prison job caring for aging inmates with Alzheimer’s and dementia. What begins as a self-interested bid for parole becomes a profound, transformative bond with fellow inmate Louis, offering Frank a glimpse of redemption in an unforgiving place.
Frank & Louis

An affluent city is covered in snow, all seems perfect – on the surface. Divorcé Rolf is doing his best to rebuild his relationship with his daughter. Pregnant Lena appears to be living a faultless family life with her husband and son. Social worker Judith has a tough job and escapes it through her fantasies, whilst widowed Maria has finally built up the courage to invite her male acquaintance to a romantic dinner. In the course of one day, all of them will cross paths with the Bulgarian Mia, who works in the red-light trade and their seemingly perfect lives will never be the same…
Dreamland

Three respectable citizens of a Swiss winter sports resort find themselves in financial trouble due to a lack of snow. When Paul, René, and Werner find the plan for the perfect bank robbery at the home of their deceased curling friend Heinz, they are willing to take the risk after some initial hesitation. Preparations are in full swing. They didn't expect their love lives to be completely turned upside down in the process. Finally, the three men manage to break into the bank... The surprise is great when the vault door opens!
Small Fish

Nora is a young housewife and mother, living in a quaint little village with her husband and their two sons. The Swiss countryside is untouched by the major social upheavals the movement of 1968 has brought about. Nora’s life is not affected either; she is a quiet person who is liked by everybody – until she starts to publicly fight for women’s suffrage, which the men are due to vote on in a ballot on February 7, 1971.
The Divine Order

A newly retired couple embarks on a cruise, but they find themselves drifting further apart. When things don’t go as planned, they learn to evolve their relationship in this affectionate comedy about self-discovery and developing new ways to spend one’s golden years.
Golden Years

André, 55, lives with his mother Louise, 80, and leads an unspectacular life. He works as a taxi driver while the elderly diva dreams of bygone days as an actress in Hollywood. One day the charismatic Bill, 50, an American, turns up on their doorstep - a stranger who will soon turn their quiet life upside down.
Lovely Louise

An account of the life and work of the Swiss writer Johanna Spyri (1827-1901), the barely known artistic mother of Heidi, her brave alpine heroine, who was first introduced to the world between 1880 and 1881, in a novel published in two parts, and became definitely immortal thanks to an anime series, released in 1974, directed by the Japanese genius Isao Takahata.
Heidi's Alpine Dream

Housewife Therese Karlen has been suffering from insomnia for some time. Overwhelmed by her husband and children, she sets off with pensioner Liselott on a journey of self-discovery to the Bernese Oberland.
Nice Weekend

Hairdresser Marilyn's life is going nowhere fast: her salon has run into financial difficulties, her weight is out of control and her affair with a married man is an ongoing disaster.
Meier Marilyn

Leni, in her mid-fifties, runs the local bakery with her son in a small Swiss town. When she falls in love with a much younger Argentinean dance teacher, her world is turned upside down.
Spring in Autumn
Young Luce starts her first job in a nursing home for elderly people. Besides her daily work, she takes interest in her patients and feels especially responsible for old Rosa.
Crevetten

Just as Lolo, a gay Italian-Secondo, is getting ready to spend a romantic evening with his lover, his Italian Nonna makes an unexpected appearance.
The Fiancee
Hitler's Daughter
Two adolescents go for a drive with the father of one of them. They become bored and the father, frustrated by the distance which is increasingly separating him from his daughter, cannot understand them. At a rest stop, Baby and Anna Sara decide to take the opportunity to go for a walk in the nearby forest. This film, a final project prior to graduation from the Konrad Wolf school in Potsdam, deals with first amorous impulses in an atmosphere alternating between reality and post-modern fairy tale.
Schlorkbabies an der Raststätte
A Foreplay.
Der Kuss