By Jessica Herndon

Josephine arrives with a quiet force that lingers long after the screen goes dark. Premiering in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, the film unfolds from a moment that fractures childhood innocence: An 8-year-old girl witnesses an act of violence in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, and her sense of safety never fully returns. What follows is a piercing portrait of how fear can taint a young life.

Written and directed by Beth de Araújo, Josephine, which was developed in the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program, explores the consequences of violence. The film tells this story primarily from its protagonist’s point of view, allowing discomfort, anger, and confusion to drive the emotional experience. The camera often invites us to see the world from Josephine’s eye level, resulting in a haunting effect that cuts deep because it refuses to soften what fear and uncertainty feel like when you’re too young to name them.

Araújo began writing the film in 2014, “when I realized something had happened when I was very young that really haunted me,” she says after the film’s premiere at the Eccles Theatre. “So, I decided to take a stab at writing about female fear, and how that’s shaped who I’ve become, and just keep it through the eyes of an 8-year-old the entire time — what she experiences and how she learns about male aggression — and take fear to the extreme.” 

After finishing a draft of the script, she became a fellow in the Sundance Institute Directors Lab, after which she sent the spec project to Gemma Chan, who immediately “came onto this project, lending her name without wavering,” says Araújo. 

Channing Tatum and Chan deliver deeply felt performances as Damien and Claire, devoted parents grasping for solutions that don’t exist. Their love is unquestionable, but the film offers a glimpse of how good intentions can only go so far in the face of a child’s trauma. In her striking feature debut, Mason Reeves portrays a child battling vulnerability and defiance, tenderness and fury. Her Josephine lashes out not for attention, but for control, testing boundaries in an effort to rebuild them. 

Araújo discovered Reeves when visiting a farmer’s market in San Francisco. Upon approaching Reeves’ mom, Araújo remembers saying, “Hi, I’m looking for someone to play the daughter of Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan.” Reeves’ mom thought she was blowing smoke. “[She’s] like, “‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’” But after some convincing, Reeves auditioned for the part of Josephine and blew Araújo away. “What I liked most was all of it,” Reeves said when asked by Kim Yutani, the Director of Programming of the Sundance Film Festival, about her favorite part of making Josephine.

While sitting in the audience during the film’s premiere, Tatum, who decided to wait until the Festival to watch the film in its entirety for the first time, says he “cried five or six, seven times,” due to being moved by the performances of his co-stars and seeing Araújo’s vision come to life. “Beth, I love you,” Tatum says, getting emotional while standing with Araújo on stage after the film’s debut. “You absolutely are a master filmmaker.” Adds Chan, “From the moment I read the script, I just felt that there was truth radiating from the page, and I thought it was a really challenging subject matter, but I thought the way you engaged it and the way you forced us to see this through a child’s eyes and the questions you were asking — I thought it was a really brave thing and I knew, from the moment we spoke, I believed in you. I think you’re amazing. I think you’re just incredible, and thank you for trusting me.” 

To prepare for the film, Chan, Tatum, and Reeves hung out a bit to get comfortable with each other, Chan reveals. “Being a parent is hard,” says Tatum, who has a 12-year-old daughter. “I guess there is a wrong way to do it, but I don’t know if there’s exactly a right way to do it.” Nudging Reeves, Tatum adds, “This one made it a lot easier because it was just a lot of fun to get to play around with her.” But because the subject matter of the film was so intense, he admits he was “concerned with her not thinking that I actually was mad at her.” Says Reeves, “He kept asking me about it, and I was like, “‘I’m fine!’” 

As laughter spreads across the room, Tatum adds, “I was so scared.” But judging from their playful vibe — Tatum picking Reeves up and swinging her back and forth when she came up on stage; the two jokingly kicking each other while standing side by side during the post-screening Q&A — he had nothing to worry about.