Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan carry the new trailer for Josephine, Sumerian Pictures' Sundance double winner, which arrived this week ahead of the film's November theatrical run — and the preview sells a feeling as much as a premise — a bright day in a San Francisco park, a father and daughter out together, and then a moment that splits a family's life into before and after. Sumerian Pictures released the new preview this week ahead of the film's theatrical rollout this fall, and it arrives carrying the kind of festival pedigree that turns a small, personal drama into one of the season's must-see releases.
Josephine is written and directed by Beth de Araújo and built around an experience from her own childhood, a project she worked for 12 years to bring to the screen. That long road paid off in January, when the film won both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival — a double victory last achieved by CODA, which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film also screened at Berlin, extending a festival run that has steadily built word of mouth through the year.
An eight-year-old at the center of an adult story
The story follows eight-year-old Josephine, played by newcomer Mason Reeves in her feature debut, who witnesses a brutal crime in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park while out with her father. Reeves was discovered at a farmers market, a casting story that already feels like festival lore, and critics who have seen the film have singled out her performance again and again — not for precocious polish, but for how naturally she carries scenes that would test actors three times her age.
Her parents, Damien and Claire, are played by Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan. As Josephine struggles to process what she saw, her parents struggle in parallel — with how to help a child cope with trauma, with each other, and with a legal reality that keeps pulling the family back to the worst day of their lives: the court case that follows hinges on Josephine's testimony. The trailer leans into that tension, cutting between the warmth of the family's ordinary life and the sterile, frightening machinery of a courtroom waiting on a child's words.
It is, by early accounts, a demanding watch handled with care. The A.V. Club's film editor has described the film in terms that amount to harrowing and powerful — praise that matches the tone of the trailer, which refuses to sensationalize the crime itself and keeps its camera, emotionally speaking, on the family living in its aftermath. Readers following our fall movie coverage can also see how crowded the season is getting in our look at the Street Fighter movie arriving October 16 — a very different kind of theatrical bet opening in the same window.
A dramatic turn for Tatum — on screen and behind it
Tatum's presence is a story in itself. Known first for comedy and action, he has been steadily choosing more dramatic material, and critics out of Sundance singled out his turn here as a father trying to be strong in a situation where strength is not really an option. Both he and Chan also serve as producers on the film, a sign of how personally the two leads invested in de Araújo's vision — this was not a paycheck role for either of them.
Chan, for her part, plays the parent who has to hold two truths at once: protecting her daughter from further harm while knowing the justice system is asking that same daughter to relive what happened. The supporting cast includes Philip Ettinger, Michael Angelo Covino, Dana Millican, Syra McCarthy and Eleanore Pienta, rounding out a world that stretches from the family home to the courtroom.
Twelve years to make, two prizes to launch
De Araújo's 12-year path to production is the kind of detail that can sound like publicity until you watch how the film is constructed. A story drawn from the filmmaker's own childhood experience carries an obvious risk — sentimentality, or its opposite, a protective distance — and the festival response suggests she threaded it. Winning the Grand Jury Prize means a jury of peers judged it the best American dramatic film at Sundance; winning the Audience Award means ordinary festivalgoers, voting with their ballots after screenings, agreed. Films that do both tend to travel. CODA is the obvious precedent, and Sumerian is clearly positioning Josephine for a similar slow-build theatrical life rather than a one-weekend splash.
That strategy shows in the release plan. The film opens in select theaters on November 20, 2026, giving it a platform launch through the Thanksgiving corridor, then expands nationwide on December 4. It is a classic awards-season rollout: start where the reviews and word of mouth are loudest, let the conversation build, and be everywhere by the time year-end lists are being written. For more on the season's family-scale storytelling on a much bigger canvas, see our coverage of Greta Gerwig's Narnia trailer.
What the trailer gets right
Trailers for films about children in peril have a failure mode — they either hide the premise entirely or exploit it. This one does neither. It establishes Golden Gate Park as a place of light and ordinary joy, lets the inciting incident land as rupture rather than spectacle, and then spends its remaining time on faces: a daughter watching her parents, parents watching their daughter, and a system watching all three. Reeves, Tatum and Chan do a remarkable amount of acting in glances alone, which is presumably the point — the film is about what a family cannot quite say to one another.
Whether Josephine follows CODA all the way into awards history is a question for December. What is already clear is that Sumerian has one of the year's most decorated festival titles, a breakout child performance discovered at a farmers market, and two movie stars doing some of the most serious work of their careers. The trailer is out now; select theaters get the film November 20, and the rest of the country follows December 4.
