Araújo's 'Josephine' Reaches TIFF After 11-Year Wait — SkimNews
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- "Josephine" premiered at Sundance earlier this year to massive acclaim and screens at the Toronto International Film Festival ahead of a planned fall release.
- Beth de Araújo first drafted the script in 2014, passed through the 2018 Sundance Lab, and waited 11 years for the film to premiere — surviving COVID and the strikes delays.
- Gemma Chan signed on in 2019 to play Claire, a ballet dancer and Josephine's mother who pushes for her daughter's therapy and courtroom testimony.
- Channing Tatum joined after seeing Araújo's earlier feature "Soft & Quiet"; the role of dad Damien was originally written as British before Tatum came aboard.
- Mason Reeves, a non-actor from San Francisco, was spotted by Araújo running past her at a farmer's market in the filmmaker's childhood neighborhood and cast six weeks before filming.
- The production protected Reeves on set by having her mother present daily, casting the family dog as the film's therapy dog, giving her older brother a small part, and never having her read the full script — instead drawing on sense memory from her own life for emotional scenes.
- Reeves' parents had already explained the word "rape" to her through a conversation with her older brother, mirroring the script's approach to the character's pivotal moment of discovery.
- Araújo based the film on her own experience witnessing an assault in Golden Gate Park as a child in San Francisco, framing the story largely through the eyes of eight-year-old Josephine.
Why it matters: An 11-year development cycle — through COVID and the strikes — sets up a test of whether a Sundance-acclaimed debut about childhood trauma can expand its reach at TIFF, and the answer hinges partly on how audiences respond to the casting of a non-actor child star whose real-life family discussions of the film's subject matter aligned with the script by chance.
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