When my daughter Harley was born, I was often reminded that there is no playbook, no Hitchhiker’s Guide to Parenting to consult when uncertainty takes hold. It remains the greatest responsibility I will ever carry, one defined by constant evolution and recalibration. While it is true that there is no singular way to be a father, cinema has long served as a lens through which I have learned, reflected, and grown. Over the past three years, a steady rotation of films has entered my orbit, subtly shaping my understanding of parenthood. This year’s Sundance Film Festival adds another entry to that personal canon.
One of the earliest and most instinctual mandates of parenthood is protection, the desire to shield a child from the cruelties of the world. It is an impossible task in practice, as life’s harsher truths inevitably arrive, yet the effort to preserve innocence remains one of the defining early tests of being a parent. Beth de Araújo’s Josephine operates within that tension, examining helplessness and cautious hope, innocence interrupted, and the quiet resilience of the familial bond.
The film ultimately frames parental fear not as failure, but as an extension of love itself, using that unease to guide a story about protection, limitation, and the cost of holding on too tightly.
Josephine opens on a routine father-daughter morning, as eight-year-old Josephine and her dad wake early to watch Premier League soccer. During a run through Golden Gate Park, Josephine pulls ahead, only to witness a violent assault unfold before her eyes. In an instant, her sense of safety and innocence is shattered. What follows is a difficult and isolating journey through trauma, as Josephine struggles to process what she has seen, a path that ultimately leads to the weight and vulnerability of testifying in court.
Josephine is not an easy subject to tackle, and one that could go wrong in countless ways, but the film’s success is a testament to Beth de Araújo’s screenplay and direction. Araújo approaches the material with clear-eyed realism: the answers are never easy, and we’re rarely granted the comfort of having all of them. Her visual tricks linger long after the film ends, both powerful and haunting. As a parent, some of Damien and Claire’s choices are maddening, bordering on irresponsible, and the film isn’t interested in softening that frustration. Yet Araújo, drawing from her own lived experience, refuses judgment in favor of understanding, allowing those choices to exist as complicated, human, and painfully real.
Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum are both doing some of the strongest work of their careers here, with Tatum in particular tapping into something unexpectedly affecting. Still, the film’s true revelation is Mason Reeves, who doesn’t just register as a breakout but as a performance that will likely show up on plenty of year-end lists. Reeves conveys an extraordinary emotional depth, navigating the trauma and its aftermath with an honesty that never feels forced or performative. Phillip Ettinger also deserves praise, delivering a largely nonverbal turn that lingers in unsettling ways long after the film ends.
Josephine ultimately left me thinking about how much of parenthood is shaped by fear and how inseparable that fear is from love itself. Since my daughter Harley was born, I’ve come to accept that there is no roadmap for protecting a child from a world capable of shattering innocence in an instant. The film understands that tension intimately, sitting in the space between good intentions and unavoidable consequences, where doing your best can still feel painfully insufficient. Araújo isn’t interested in offering answers or comfort, only in honesty, and that refusal to judge is what gives the film its quiet power. Long after it ends, Josephine lingers as a reminder of how fragile protection truly is and how deeply human it is to keep trying anyway.
