There’s a particular type of Sundance film – usually following a character finding their voice by the end of the film. It’s a genre so densely populated among entries in each edition of the festival that it almost makes one suspicious when a film’s synopsis reads the following words: ‘childhood’, ‘trauma’, ‘coming-of-age’. And yet, once in a while comes along a film that incorporates all genre staples and still manages to find such specificity in the most mundane observations that it makes even the most well-intentioned (and presumptuous) viewers eat humble pie. Before walking into Beth de Araujo’s Josephine, I had tried to read as little as I could. The only thing that made me book the film in the first place was Channing Tatum’s familiar face on the poster. It was the film’s world premiere – an event that could be underwhelming and only made more annoying with the principal crew present at these occasions because the audience feels compelled to give a standing ovation out of politeness. I’m happy to report that when the audience stood up for de Araujo’s film at the end – it was not the slightest bit out of obligation.Josephine, which has been around 12 years in the making, borrows its name from its 8-year-old protagonist. Opening with her point-of-view, shot as she’s staring at her father in a garage, the film seems to prepare us for how the entire film will unveil from her perspective. Born to a soccer dad (Channing Tatum) and a contemporary dancer (Gemma Chan) – it appears that she has the best of both worlds: a sportsperson’s grit and an artist’s empathy. And yet, something else informs her worldview for the rest of her life – something she didn’t even plan on. An incident simply rams into her life – and changes it forever.She’s on an early morning run with her father in the park, when she becomes an inadvertent witness to a sexual assault. A man barges into a women’s toilet and rapes her. Josephine is hiding behind a bush as she sees the entire act taking place. De Araujo films the assault scene with a matter-of-fact brutality, never pulling her punches. It’s admirable how composed she remains while capturing the survivor’s shame, the perpetrator’s lack of remorse, a child’s stunned expression as she tries to make sense of something that feels ‘wrong’ on a primal level. Tatum, as Damien, is equally authentic in the scene – balancing his fatherly concern for his child after he finds her witnessing the assault, while also thinking on his feet to catch the perpetrator. A still from Josephine.Josephine’s world will never be the same again. Going home with a father, who tries to distract her with a game of soccer in the aftermath of this incident, she also lives with a mother who is a little more equipped — and yet realises her limitations about counselling her daughter, after she’s witnessed something so extreme. De Araujo’s choices are exacting – never wringing the situation for sentimentality, instead doing the opposite and affording Josephine one of the most stoic faces ever seen on screen. One can’t immediately tell the ‘impact’ of witnessing something extreme – causing the audience to lean into observing Josephine’s behaviour more closely. How she googles the word ‘raiped’ after hearing it in her parent’s conversation, or the way she starts acting out in front of her parents, becoming more disapproving of her class bully. I was surprised by how De Araujo’s film danced between Josephine’s horror and the track featuring her parents, who were put on the spot to have some very grown-up conversations with their eight-year-old. Tatum and Chan are incredible as Damien and Claire – trying to console their daughter in the way they feel is right. Damien, the sensitive and idealistic jock that he is, tries to drill a sense of justice into his delicate darling. Claire, capable of more nuance and complexity, is torn between trying to protect her eight-year-old’s innocence and telling her the truth: women are not safe in this world, and it’s only up to her to look after herself. We see Chan hesitating from making broad statements, trying to keep the conversation as much two-way as possible, while Damien rains down on his daughter with unidirectional sermons. Neither of them are wrong – it’s just ordinary parents thrust into extraordinary circumstances, trying to do the best they can. A still from Josephine.I was impressed by how De Araujo’s film remains studious and authentic while portraying the tangents emerging from the film’s central conflict. How the assault informs Josephine’s fear of the men around her, her confusion between consensual sex and rape, how she starts to cuss or have violent outbursts towards her schoolmates (especially boys), hoe she’s unable to wrap her head around a justice system that favours perpetrators – when she’s suddenly thrust into the spotlight as the ‘star witness’ of the case. Also, it’s incredible how De Araujo grounds the horror most women (especially Josephine) have to deal with on a daily basis – showing how Josephine manifests the spirit of the perpetrator (played by Phillip Ettinger), as she goes about her life. When she asks her mother if she was ever raped, Claire answers in the negative – her tears betraying her response. “People are resilient,” Claire tells Josephine – hinting that it’s the inevitable fate of most women. De Araujo employs long takes to bring in a documentary-like stillness to the film, especially inside a court scene when the camera is unbroken as it goes around in circles as both the prosecution and the defense lawyers question Josephine on the stand. I was left with tears in my eyes – seeing an innocent child stand up to the defense lawyer’s patronising line of questioning, trying to chip away at the credibility of the only eyewitness of the incident.Josephine rests entirely on the tiny shoulders of eight-year-old Mason Reeves, turning in one of the great child performances on screen, in her debut. The burning rage followed by her gradual distrust of men around her, make the character that much more heartbreaking. Forced to go from being a girl to a woman in the span of a few months – Reeves’s performance is incredibly intelligent and naturalistic, which is as much director De Araujo’s credit as the debutante’s.The most impressive thing about de Araujo’s second directorial venture is also how she doesn’t try to cheat her audience by some false sense of optimism. As Josephine contends how she’s not ‘scared’ anymore — Damien, who was earlier cocksure about protecting his daughter from any untoward incident, is not sure anymore. In refusing catharsis, Josephine lands its hardest blow: girlhood, once broken, is never fully restored – only survived.*Josephine had its world premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah – where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for the US Dramatic Competition.