Midnight Family review – private ambulance documentary plays like a thriller

With the precarious state of the NHS in the UK and the battle for Medicare for All raging in the US, there could hardly be a better moment to release Midnight Family, a gripping, bleak, and darkly comic documentary about the perils of a privatised emergency healthcare system. Luke Lorentzen’s film takes us on to the streets of Mexico City at night, where a miserably overstretched fleet of “official” ambulances is supplemented by private vehicles chasing after reports of disasters on their police scanners.

One such ambulance is owned by the Ochoa family, and we spend a few hectic working nights with them as they dart around the city, looking to make some cash, and sometimes seeking to help where they can. The first thing you notice is how young this crew is. Juan, the remarkable driver and de facto leader, is just 16, balancing dashes through the crowded roads and negotiations with frantic family members with charming phone calls to his girlfriend Jessica and looking after his younger brother, Josue. Josue, who can’t be older than 12, joins Juan every night as part of the team (sometimes even inviting his friends along, which gives the back of the ambulance a truly bizarre party atmosphere), and his presence adds a humour that can’t help but be uncomfortable, even as it entertains.

It’s an inherently ghoulish business, but it does require an empathy and kindness, and Lorentzen matches his form with his content. We’re afforded insights into the lives of people on the worst nights of their lives, but the worst of the injuries and grieving is kept off camera and, for the most part, he keeps the tension of every callout as heart-in-mouth anxiety rather than excitement. There’s also room for some moving tenderness, especially whenever the team’s actual medic, Manuel, is on screen.

Manuel has a way with the people he treats that makes you forget about the rather exploitative context, whether he’s reassuring a teenage girl who’s been attacked by her boyfriend or resuscitating a toddler affected by the drugs of its deadbeat dad (the whole crew’s utter disgust with the father is very powerful). It’s in these moments that you see the value of these private ambulances in a city that simply doesn’t pay its people enough attention, though Lorentzen lets the situation speak for itself without much political grandstanding.

If there’s a villain of the piece, it’s the police force, who require constant bribes to stay out of the ambulances’ way. It’s generally up to Juan’s father Fernando to haggle with the cops who, in perhaps the film’s most chilling moment of inhumanity, baselessly arrest Juan whilst patients lie in the back of his stationary vehicle. It’s an affectingly bleak vision of the worst case scenario for public services, and tells a brilliantly complete story within a less than 80 minute runtime.

Midnight Family doesn’t quite stick the landing, an ending montage dampened by an unnecessary music cue and an unfortunately hilarious, scene-stealing background performance from a very fat man trying and failing to hail a taxi. But that doesn’t take much away from a powerful, urgent film. It’s a cautionary tale that plays like a thriller, with a vision of a potential future that should terrify British and American viewers alike.