Sundance Film Festival 2026 – From the outset, writer/director Beth de Araújo’s Josephine is a tough watch. It begins with 8-year-old Josephine (Mason Reeves) witnessing a horrific crime in Golden Gate Park. It haunts her for the rest of the runtime. Yet, for as difficult as Josephine is to screen, due to the subject matter, it’s also one of those films that you’ll be glad you finished. It’s a riveting movie with strong performances all around.
Josephine witnesses the crime after she dashes ahead of her dad, Damien (Channing Tatum), during their regular Sunday jog. From behind a tree, the child sees a man named Greg (Philip Ettinger) rape a woman named Sandra (Syra McCarthy) after she exits a park restroom. Josephine deals with the trauma and aftermath of this horrific event for the two-hour runtime. It worsens her behavior in school, to the point she puts a plastic bag over the face of a boy who shoved her. Her parents try everything, including a therapist, but their daughter can’t shake what she witnessed. Even when the family moves, she still sees Greg everywhere, including in her new bedroom. This film is powerful, in part, because of the way it deals with Josephine’s trauma and how so many of the camera angles show us the world from her perspective.
Meanwhile, Josephine is asked to testify in court against the accused, which only causes her to relive the event over and over again. This builds to one heck of an emotional climax that won’t be spoiled here. This is a tense movie that often leans into thriller territory.
The film is also an emotionally charged gut punch with heart-wrenching performances. Tatum shows a wide range of emotion, from anger to a softness that we rarely see from him. Reeves is especially good, considering the heavy subject matter, while Gemma Chan is fantastic as Josephine’s mom, Claire. In fact, other than Reeves’ performance, Chan’s is my favorite in the film. She gives Claire such depth as a mom who wants to protect her child, sometimes sugarcoating what happened, to Damien’s dismay, but always with Josephine’s best interests at heart. As a trio, Reeves, Tatum, and Chan really knock it out of the park and convey the turmoil the family undergoes because of what Josephine witnessed and the pressure on her to testify in court.
The camera work, especially the frequent shots from Josephine’s POV, are another high point, as is the script. I’ve never seen a movie that deals with trauma so well from a child’s point of view. This is reflected in the camera work and the world shown through Josephine’s innocent eyes, but also through the figure of Greg’s ghost that constantly lurks around Josephine. She says to the lawyer at one point, “I see him everywhere.” She even takes a self-defense class, and this is very much a movie about Josephine learning to defeat the monster that she sees everywhere. She just has to find the courage to do so.
Josephine deserves all the hype it earned at Sundance. It feels like this year’s breakout film and for good reason. This is an emotionally rich, complex, and heavy film with compelling performances from Tatum, Chan, and Reeves. Araújo’s’s feature is a difficult and challenging watch, but well-worth it.
