JOSEPHINE Special Screenings

Screening to be followed by a conversation with AFI Alumna, director, screenwriter and producer Beth de Araújo.

With her remarkable sophomore feature, Beth de Araújo (AFI Class of 2013) explores the aftermath of an ordinary morning that becomes the dividing line between childhood innocence and the dark realities of the adult world. Eight-year-old Josephine (an incredible Mason Reeves) is running through Golden Gate Park with her father, Damien (Channing Tatum), when she witnesses a brutal sexual assault. What follows is a taut and incisive examination of the fallout — a deeply empathetic, yet unsentimental portrait of a child who has encountered a form of violence she cannot yet fully name, while the adults around her struggle to explain or contain it. De Araújo filters the narrative almost exclusively through Josephine’s unsettled perspective, gradually allowing realism to give way to something verging on psychological horror, as the attacker becomes a recurring presence in her imagination and the world takes on a menacing aura. Greta Zozula’s superb cinematography reinforces this subjective experience, transforming familiar spaces into places of uncertainty as Josephine becomes increasingly fearful and confused, while the adults around her seem incapable of adequately addressing what happened, her father responding by offering physical protection, while her mother, Claire (Gemma Chan), attempts to seek professional help. As Josephine becomes involved in the legal process, De Araújo’s astute script also exposes the difficult burden placed on survivors and witnesses when trauma must be translated into evidence and memory itself seems to be on trial. With Reeves’ extraordinary performance at the film’s emotional center, Tatum and Chan bring equal complexity to loving parents confronting an experience they cannot simply fix. Inspired in part by de Araújo’s own childhood, JOSEPHINE is a profound and searching examination of the cascading effects of violence and trauma, the limits of parental protection and the fragile idea of safety. Its impact was recognized at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, becoming the first film to do so since 2021. –Abbie Algar