Sundance Film Festival: Channing Tatum drama ‘Josephine’ wins top jury
and audience awards
[January 31, 2026]
By LINDSEY BAHR
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Beth de Araújo’s potent family drama “Josephine,”
about an 8-year-old girl who witnesses a sexual assault, won top prizes
at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. The juries announced the winners
Friday in Park City, Utah.
“Josephine,” starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan as the girl’s
parents, became one of the festival’s early consensus hits despite its
difficult subject matter, which was based on the filmmaker’s own
experience at that age. The young girl is played by newcomer Mason
Reeves, whom de Araújo discovered at a San Francisco farmer’s market.
The film won both the U.S. dramatic grand jury prize and the festival’s
audience award but does not yet have distribution.
De Araújo wiped tears while accepting the award and gave an emotional
speech about rape culture and survivors.
“It’s very hard to talk about rape. Even just saying the word makes
people uncomfortable. But because of this there only leaves more shame
and silence for survivors,” De Araújo said. “In order to honor survivors
we must try to understand the people who rape in an attempt to prevent
it from happening again. We have the resources, we just don’t make it a
priority.”
Filmmakers Janicza Bravo, Nisha Ganatra and Azazel Jacobs were the jury
for the U.S. Dramatic Competition. They cited the film’s “depth and
nuance of storytelling” and its “delicate and elegant execution of a
challenging subject matter.” Other titles in the U.S. dramatic
competition included Josef Kubota Wladyka's “Ha-chan, Shake Your
Booty!,” which got a special prize for directing.
The grand jury prize for best U.S. documentary was awarded to “Nuisance
Bear,” about a polar bear navigating a human world.
“It took us 10 years to make this movie,” said “Nuisance Bear”
co-director Gabriela Osio Vanden, who was visibly emotional accepting
the prize. “We all do have a story to tell, including animals.”
“To Hold a Mountain,” about a mother and daughter in the remote
highlands of Montenegro defending their land from becoming a NATO
military training ground, took the international documentary prize.
“Shame and Money,” about a Kosovar family who has to move from a village
to the capital, picked up the narrative world cinema award.
Louis Paxton's quirky Scottish film “The Incomer,” about a pair of
siblings on a remote island whose lives are upended when an awkward
government official (Domhnall Gleeson) arrives to try to evict them, won
the innovator award in the festival's NEXT section.
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Director Beth de Araujo, left, and Channing Tatum attend the
premiere of "Josephine" during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday,
Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Chris
Pizzello)
 Other films that won audience awards
included documentaries “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis
Valdez,” about the pioneering playwright and screenwriter, and “One
in a Million,” which chronicled a family's journey from Syria to
Germany and back again across 10 years.
“American Pachuco” director David Alvarado said Valdez came to the
first ever Sundance in 1981, when it was still called the U.S. Film
and Video Festival, with the film “Zoot Suit.” That a documentary
about him played at the last Sundance in Park City is a full circle
moment.
“It shows the full commitment to the Latino story that Sundance has
always championed,” Alvarado said.
The festival previously awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film
Prize, which celebrates outstanding films representing science or
technology, to Andrew Stanton’s “In the Blink of an Eye.”
High profile Sundance films like Olivia Wilde's “The Invite,” the
queer horror “Leviticus” and the Charli xcx movie “The Moment” did
not premiere in competition and were not eligible for jury or
audience awards.
Sundance prizes can sometimes be the first stop for eventual Oscar
nominees and winners, which notably happened with “CODA” and “Summer
of Soul.” Documentaries more so than narrative films have a better
track record of making it to the Oscars stage. Three of last year’s
special prize winners are nominated for best documentary this year,
“The Perfect Neighbor,” “Cutting Through Rocks” and “Mr. Nobody
Against Putin” and the two others were among the festival favorites,
“Come See Me in the Good Light” and “The Alabama Solution.”
Last year’s U.S. Dramatic grand jury prize went to the war satire “Atropia,”
while the audience award was given to the dark comedy “Twinless,”
with Dylan O’Brien.
The Sundance Film Festival runs through Sunday.
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