52 Films by Women Vol 10. 4. JOSEPHINE (Director: Beth de Araújo)

 

Pictured: Having witnessed a sexual assault, eight-year-old Josephine (Mason Reeves) finds herself in the back of a police car with the victim (Syra McCarthy) in writer-director Beth de Araújo's troubling drama, 'Josephine'. Still courtesy of Berlinale / Sundance Film Festival

Review contains significant plot detail and triggering material

However you respond to writer-director Beth de Araújo’s second feature, Josephine – her feature debut, Soft & Quiet, was released under the Blumhouse [horror] banner in 2022 - you are unlikely to forget it. The titular Josephine (Mason Reeves) is an athletic-minded, father-worshipping eight-year-old girl, who witnesses a sexual assault after racing ahead of her Liverpool Football Club-supporting father, Damien (Channing Tatum) in a San Francisco public park. In looking for her, Damien takes a wrong turn – cue early gasps from the audience. Josephine, variously referred to as Jo by Dad or JoJo by her dancer mother, Claire (Gemma Chan) is frozen in fear as the assault, which involves subduing the victim, Sandra (Syra McCarthy) by attempting to knock her unconscious, takes place. The attacker, Greg (Philip Ettinger) is apprehended. However, justice is not a foregone conclusion, especially when the victim decides not to give evidence, instead moving back to Virginia in an attempt to recover; the prosecution is unwilling to subpoena her to aggravate her trauma. Josephine not only has to deal with the burden of remembrance of a situation in which she too was in danger – both the victim and the attacker see her, in the latter’s case after he ejaculates – but also process the event in school and at home. In so doing, she is forced to evaluate male and female behaviour as her father and mother respond in different ways, neither being right. Then, as the only witness, she has to prepare for trial.

De Araújo adds one element to underline the ever-presence of the attacker in the family’s lives. She shows Greg as a physical presence in the home, sometimes interacting silently with Josephine, sometimes quietly sitting in the same room as the family. This intrusion becomes real when de Araújo shows him delivering a gun periodical through the family’s letterbox, tantamount to a threat. We discover later that the attacker’s aunt posted bail on his behalf.

The immediate post-incident response – minutes after the attack - has an effect on Josephine as well. Her father appears, tells her to follow instructions, including picking up her bag, but not her football, which remains in the background as a nagging reminder of innocence lost, while he joins the police in pursuing the attacker. A cop ushers her into the back of the police car. She questions the absence of seatbelts. ‘My parents say they’re there to protect you.’ ‘They can’t protect you from everything,’ the cop replies, a phrase Josephine later repeats. She notices that the windows are closed and she is locked in. Then the victim joins her in the car, dazed with trauma. The victim fixates on her hairgrip. Did the police find it? She and Josephine sit in silence. Then she asks if she can search for it. There is a surreal image of the victim, Josephine and the police hunched on the ground looking for the hair grip as if common activity can help diffuse the sombre atmosphere. ‘I found it,’ says Josephine, cheerfully holding the hairgrip aloft. Her glee is an affront to the victim, though Josephine doesn’t know it. Josephine and the victim see the attacker in handcuffs, having been apprehended. Damien spits at him, a gesture that the impressionable Josephine will copy.

Damien’s immediate response is to distract the child, continuing to kick a football. He knows that he has to do something, is sensitive to his daughter’s experience, but lacks a full emotional vocabulary. ‘Your mother is better at talking,’ he later admits. At this point, because of the attention he gives her, the amount of his life that he allows her to share, he is more effective at influencing her, to the extent that when Claire drives Josephine to an appointment with a psychiatrist, Josephine declares that she wants to go to football practice, then opens the car door and runs into traffic. Claire abandons her vehicle in pursuit of her daughter but loses sight of her. Damien – and a policeman - eventually find Josephine on the bank of a football field. ‘There you are,’ he says, trying to make light of the distress that Josephine has unwittingly caused. You empathise with Damien and his effort not to compound Josephine’s trauma, which he partially shares. However, what he does next freezes our responses.

Damien decides to take Josephine to self-defence classes so that ‘nothing like that [i.e., rape] will ever happen to you’. The only children in the class are boys and most of them are taller than Josephine. The instructor makes himself Josephine’s partner. We see her follow his direction perfectly, clenching her fist and punching. However, we question the efficacy of this approach. Should you learn a martial art (karate) from a place of deepening trauma? We understand too that trauma is liquid, soaking through porous layers of a person’s psyche, staining each one.

Josephine doesn’t speak to a psychiatrist, but she is interviewed by the police. Damien doesn’t allow the police detective to take Josephine to the station immediately, but the child attends the next day. The interviewer, an older woman, points out the cameras in the room – she doesn’t take notes. We note the openness of the space, designed to cater for intermittent distraction, allowing for breathing space between testimonies. Paper and toys are scattered in the room. There is also an Alsatian dog curled up on the floor in case Josephine feels like stroking it. After answering a few questions, miming the attacker’s behaviour and indicating the place where his ‘pee-pee’ is, Josephine acknowledges the Alsatian. ‘I like her fur,’ Josephine remarks. ‘His fur,’ the interviewer sternly corrects her. ‘The dog is a ‘he’.’

School offers a greater challenge for Josephine. She quotes the word rape, which she looked up on a mobile phone, the device falling out of her hand, Josephine undoing her seatbelt to retrieve it, much to her mother’s consternation. She talks to a classmate about sex. Does she know what it is? Then she engages a boy in an arm-wrestling match. Josephine is strong; her father helped her develop her upper body strength. Josephine wins, but then the boy pushes her. Josephine puts a plastic bag over the kid’s head and asks him never to touch her again, removing the bag when he consents. This prompts the school to summon her parents.

The child is confused that the attacker can’t remain in jail. Bail doesn’t prevent him from harming other people. Josephine sees the world with more moral clarity than her parents. The legal system relies too heavily on process and trust. Nevertheless, she poses pertinent questions. ‘Do you think that man [the attacker] was bad?’ she asks her parents. ‘Or was he a good man who did a bad thing?’ Her parents can’t answer.

Josephine’s behaviour takes a disturbing turn. First, she attacks her father when she walks in on Damien and Claire having sex. Then when she discovers that her mother, pregnant with her second child, is expecting a boy, Josephine attacks her mother’s bump and knocks over a can of yellow paint, Damien desperately scooping it up in his hands – an image that encapsulates his helplessness. Josephine retreats to her new room; by this time, the family has moved. The film concludes with the trial, including a false start in which Josephine is unable to confirm her name. We wonder too about the process of hearing evidence from child witnesses and asking them to swear an oath. The lawyer does at least use a yellow pen and a red pen to illustrate the concept of lying. ‘If I say this pen is yellow, am I lying?’ he asks holding up a red pen. Ironically, in Trump’s America, lying and gaslighting is the government’s go-to response.

The trial itself is staged in a single take, the camera moving between Josephine, the prosecution lawyer and the defence lawyer, complete with objections – sustained or overruled – and redirects. Pointedly, the Defence Lawyer is a woman, intended to give the jury some comfort. How could the defendant be guilty if a woman is willing to defend him? Having tested Josephine’s credibility – not being able to distinguish fifteen feet – her distance from the attacker – and fifty feet – the Defence asks, ‘why didn’t you help her?’ ‘Why didn’t you?’ Josephine snaps back, a line that prompted the audience to cheer. The question belies the Defence’s refusal to acknowledge the helplessness of a child in that situation; the Defence Lawyer presents herself as inhuman.

Pictured (right to left): Claire (Gemma Chan) carries her eight-year-old daughter Josephine (Mason Reeves) accompanied by Josephine's father, Damien (Channing Tatum) in a scene from writer-director Beth de Araújo's drama, 'Josephine'. Still courtesy of Berlinale / Sundance Film Festival

There is one ‘on the nose’ image that I disliked, the attacker climbing out of Josephine’s window to symbolise that he no longer troubles her, though of course he will never be forgotten. A scene in which the family visits a toy shop and Josephine picks out a rifle, also is too ‘on point’. Aside from these moments, de Araújo’s writing and direction is bold, on point and powerfully affecting. The film itself is not cathartic, because it is unable to suggest how rape can be removed as a weapon. Men can learn appropriate behaviour – Damien acknowledges that Claire has helped him to improve his emotional intelligence – but they won’t always stop themselves hurting others physically. In a delicate scene, Josephine asks her mother whether she had been raped. Claire replies no, crying as she does so. We don’t know whether Claire is lying or is distraught that her daughter had to ask. Josephine similarly quizzes Damien about his behaviour. Did he ever behave as badly as the attacker? Damien’s pain is that he can’t adequately articulate his emotional journey, partly – we sense – because he’d never had to think about it. The Prosecution Lawyer is similarly coarse. ‘You know what I like?’ he asks Josephine. ‘I like puzzles,’ he says, emptying a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in front of the child before she has time to be intrigued as if he were pouring a breakfast cereal into her bowl.  De Araújo is a shrewd observer of human frailty. Her film Josephine, cuts through.

Reviewed at Berlinale 2026, Uber Eats Music Hall, East Berlin, Saturday 21 February 2026, 21:45 screening