Josephine

In Beth de Araujo’s new thriller – which won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival – eight-year-old Josephine (Mason Reeves) and her father (Channing Tatum) are on their way to their usual morning soccer practice when the little girl witnesses a horrific crime. When she asks what the man did to the woman, her father evades the question. This event deeply shocks Josephine. The situation is further complicated by the fact that her parents can’t find the right words or ways to help her process what happened. The little girl starts to behave increasingly violent, first at school and then toward her mother, played by Gemma Chan, she becomes overwhelmed with paranoia, and anxiety, constantly on the lookout for signs of danger around her.
‍
In Beth de Araujo’s confident direction, Mason Reeves masterfully conveys Josephine’s conflicting emotions, often without words. Greta Zozula’s lively, ever-moving camera reveals the world through the little girl’s eyes in complex, layered shots.

‍

Sundance Film Festival – Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award
Berlin International Film Festival – Competition
Toronto International Film Festival –Special Screenings
BFI London Film Festival

Beth de Araújo is a Brazilian-American film director and screenwriter. She was nominated for the Gotham Bingham Ray Award, which honors emerging directors, for her first feature film, the 2022 psychological thriller Soft & Quiet. She developed her second feature film, Josephine, at the Sundance Institute’s 2018 Directors’ Lab. The finished film won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the U.S. Feature Film Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. The director drew on her own childhood experiences for the film, which explores how an encounter with violence can change a child’s world. She compared the character of Josephine to the protagonist of Taxi Driver: in her view, the little girl is like an eight-year-old Travis Bickle.

Soft and Quite (2022)

Director: Beth de Araújo
Cast: Mason Reeves, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan
Cinematography: Greta Zozula
Screenwriter:  Beth de Araújo
Producers: David Kaplan, Josh Peters, Beth de Araújo, Marina Stabile, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Mark H. Rapaport, Josh Beirne-Golden, Crystine Zhang
Editor: Anisha Acharya, Nico Leunen, Kyle Reiter
Music: Miles Ross
Hungarian Distributor: Vertigo Média
colour
Run Time: 119 mins