‘Josephine’ Director Beth De Araújo Alludes To Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor Arrest; Channing Tatum Talks Parenting: “Don’t F**K With My Daughter!” – Berlinale

Josephine director Beth de Araújo touched down at the Berlinale with its co-stars Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan and Mason Reeves on Friday.

The drama, revolving around titular eight-year-old Josephine who witnesses a violent sexual assault at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, appears to be one of the best received films in competition so far, judging by the buzzy line of questions in the room.

De Araújo spoke about how the film had been inspired by her own witnessing of such an event as a child, which had left her with a sense of hyper-vigilance beyond her years.

This account prompted a question on whether the director felt society had become better at dealing with this sort of childhood psychological trauma some 30 years on.

“It depends what country I think, but I don’t think we’re better equipped to handle it now. I think maybe this week the UK is,” she replied, in what seemed to be an allusion to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest in the UK on Thursday.

The former prince was detained for questioning on suspicion of misconduct in public office linked to his relationship with the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and the sharing of confidential material. 

De Araújo’s veiled comment is a sign of the wider reverberations of Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest, which has re-stoked calls from U.S. lawmakers and Epstein victims for greater accountability. 

Late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre accused Mountbatten-Windsor of sexually abusing her when she was sex trafficked by a ring run by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He has denied the allegations and Thursday’s arrest does not appeared to be linked to those accusations.

Later in the press conference, de Araújo repeated the calls of her Sundance-winning speech for more to be done to hold rapists and pedophiles accountable.

“I think there needs to be accountability. It creates more silence… I’m not even speaking as a director right now, just like a concerned human being,” she said. “I think it creates more silence, more shame and leaving survivors to have to heal completely on their own, the less accountability that there is towards the perpetrators, the pedophiles and the rapists. The shame needs to be on them… We have to find a way to holding accountable more possible.”

Talking about his preparation for his role in film as Josephine’s father, who struggles with how to deal with the situation, Tatum revealed he had tapped into his own fatherhood experiences.

“I have a 12-year-old, and I was a 12-year-old myself at some point in my life as well. Thankfully, I didn’t have this event happen to my 12-year-old self, he said “But I remember, with my daughter when she was in preschool, I got called to school because my daughter got into a fight.”

Recalling his stress as he drove there, he recounted how the principal had approached him after he pulled up to say she how proud she was of his daughter, because she had tackled a boy being violent towards her friend.

“She’s like, ‘Hey, I need to tell you I’m proud of Evie’. My daughter’s name is Evie. ‘I’m proud of Evie. I can’t say that in there, because we’re not allowed, we can’t have fighting at the school,” he recounted. “Apparently, there was a boy that was being very physical with them, and she told the teacher. The teacher scolded the boy, and then eventually, the boy did something to her best friend, and she spider monkey tackled this kid to the ground and bit his ear.

“I’m in the office, and like, ‘F**k yeah.’… I took her to get an ice cream right afterwards,” he said, then referring to a scene in Josephine. “That conversation that I had with Josephine underneath the bridge is a conversation that I’ve had with my daughter. You will never be in trouble with me, if you protect yourself, if someone is doing something you don’t like…. don’t f**k with my daughter. She listened and doesn’t suffer fools.

Josephine arrives at the Berlinale with the wind in its sails from Sundance, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award prizes, garnered strong reviews and sparked early 2026-27 awards season buzz.