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When “Josephine” director Beth de Araújo stood on stage at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills on Friday afternoon to accept the Breakthrough Director Award at the Celebración Cinema & Television 2026 Critics Choice Society, she said “I had something very different in mind today, but it’s been a difficult week and I know my colleagues will want to use it.”
Although her speech had begun on an upbeat note, thanking host Jason Blum for his kind words, and for her directorial debut “Soft and Quiet,” de Araújo began rambling about the reasons for making her famous sophomore feature, which had the rare distinction of winning both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for this year’s Sundance Drama Competition, and how it was linked to the University’s recent foreclosure.
Below is the “Josephine” filmmaker’s acceptance speech, lightly edited and condensed for clarity and length.
“When I was eight, my father and I stopped a rape in the park. I started writing ‘Josephine’ when I was 27. Right after the first time my father and I ever talked about what happened, I asked him why he didn’t explain to me what the rape was when I asked on the day? Why didn’t he explain to me what was going on?
How does a father explain to his eight-year-old daughter what rape is? It is an impossible task. You can’t even tell your eight-year-old daughter that it’s unusual or unlikely to happen to her. This is what I wanted to explore in our film. This impossible task for the father to convince his daughter that she is safe because this fear is part of who she is and how she moves her body through this world.
The first word I heard out of the victim’s mouth was a scream for help. My father, a Brazilian immigrant, went after the man and helped the police arrest him. But this week we’ve learned that other men didn’t come to the former Cornell student’s aid when she needed it. The details are terrifying. The Cornell administration that granted mercy to these boys is at best a sympathizer who valued the lives of these boys over the life of Jane Doe.
These men were going to graduate and become our next leaders. It is a reminder of why so many people bear pain in silence. Not one of those 50 men behaved like my father when they saw injustice. Not one. Rape and rape culture are global epidemics. The words we read in the fraternity text series are not an anomaly.
For the men who have not lost their humanity. Please hold each other accountable even when it’s uncomfortable. Be the one who runs, not the one who laughs with the group. Help the women and girls in your life. If a young filmmaker asks you for notes on a cut of her film, give them to them. Any small communication is a great and helpful encouragement to persevere. If you don’t do it for any other reason, do it for yourself because the stories we tell build the leaders who will appear to us when we need them.
I didn’t have the ability to help the young woman in the park when I was eight. I didn’t have the faculties yet. I made ‘Josephine’ with the purpose of answering the woman’s call for help now.
This week I kept asking ‘What would Jane Doe have grown up to be when she graduated?’ The doctor, the grandfather, the journalist. In the only way she could, with whatever was left that she could muster, she called out to us for help and I hope we are all answering that call.
To my family movie, Gemma [Chan]Channing [Tatum]Phil [Ettinger]Acid [McCarthy]our cast and crew, our agents, thank you for answering that call. It was a tough story, but they made it a happy situation for me. And Mason [Reeves]our Josephine, thank you for giving more honesty, love, and tolerance to this character than I could have ever asked for. And to everyone who watched this film and talked about it, I thank you very much.”
