76th Berlin International Film Festival: Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan Premiere Beth de Araújo’s New Film Josephine

Channing Tatum, Mason Reeves and Gemma Chan at the photocall for Josephine in Berlin. Photograph (above) and cover picture of Dua Lipa by Jay Zoo for DAM

At the Grand Hyatt Berlin, hours before the evening premiere lit up the Berlinale Palast, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan and newcomer Mason Reeves gathered for the official photocall for Josephine. Writer-director Beth de Araújo's film arrives with formidable momentum and a reputation for confronting difficult subject matter with clarity rather than sensationalism. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Jay Zoo

Director Beth de Araujo's new film

took 12 years to bring to the screen. 

AT the Berlin International Film Festival, few Competition titles arrived with the emotional gravity of Josephine, Beth de Araújo’s long-gestating examination of childhood trauma and moral awakening. Premiering to a packed house at the Berlinale Palast, the film puts an eight-year-old girl at the centre of a story most cinema prefers to tell from the adult vantage point and in doing so, shifts the balance of power.

Set in contemporary America, the film follows a father and daughter whose ordinary morning is ruptured by an act of violence witnessed in real time. What unfolds is not a procedural nor a revenge drama, but a study of psychological aftershock. De Araújo is less interested in spectacle than in the slow seep of fear: how a child absorbs adult evasions, how silence can grow into hyper-vigilance.

Newcomer Mason Reeves carries the film with startling composure. Her Josephine is observant, brittle and increasingly self-protective, a child recalibrating her understanding of safety. Opposite her, Channing Tatum delivers one of his most restrained performances to date as Damien, a father caught between instinctive protectiveness and an inability to articulate the truth. Gemma Chan brings measured complexity to the role of Josephine’s mother, anchoring the domestic sphere as fissures widen between the adults.

The film examines how a single moment can fracture a childhood, reshape a family’s internal dynamics and test the boundaries between protection and denial

The cast and crew gather for a photograph in Berlin

De Araújo’s direction is precise and unsentimental. The camera frequently remains at Josephine’s eye level, allowing the audience to inhabit her limited yet intensely perceptive worldview. 

The result is a film that interrogates not only violence, but the systems, familial and legal, that attempt to contain it. Questions of testimony, accountability and parental responsibility ripple beneath the surface, lending the narrative tension without sacrificing intimacy.

At its core, the film examines how a single moment can fracture a childhood, reshape a family’s internal dynamics and test the boundaries between protection and denial. What distinguishes de Araújo’s approach is her refusal to look away from the subtle, lingering consequences of trauma, particularly as experienced by a young girl navigating a world that suddenly feels altered.

In Berlin, the film feels particularly resonant. The Berlinale has long championed socially conscious storytelling, and Josephine fits within that tradition. As the festival jury deliberates, de Araújo’s film stands as a reminder that cinema’s most radical gesture can be to look directly and unflinchingly through the eyes of a child.

As photographers called out for one more frame and the February light filtered through the hotel windows, the atmosphere was both celebratory and sober. This was not simply another red-carpet premiere; it was the unveiling of a film that asks questions about accountability, fear and the uneasy space between innocence and experience.

Scroll down to see more highlights of the cast and crew from the film premiere's photocall in Berlin 

76th Berlin International Film Festival: Testament to Talent, Amanda Seyfried's Power and Provocation

On the red carpet before the premiere of her new film, Amanda Seyfried wears a gauzy, bejewelled gown. Photograph (above) and cover picture by Jay Zoo for DAM 

Amanda Seyfried presented her latest feature, The Testament of Ann Lee, at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival. The historical narrative examines the life and leadership of the Shaker founder, tracing the rise of a religious movement built on communal living and gender equality. Blending rigorous period detail with reinterpreted Shaker hymns, the film puts the American actor at the centre of an ambitious portrait of belief, power and social reform. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Jay Zoo

Film director Mona Fastvold with Amanda 

Seyfried at their photocall in Berlin. 

THE new film, The Testament of Ann Lee, directed by Mona Fastvold and co-written with Brady Corbet, is an ambitious drama examining radical 18th-century religious ideas. 

The American and British co-production does not approach its subject as distant heritage. Instead, Fastvold frames Ann Lee as a destabilising force, a leader whose spiritual authority challenged entrenched hierarchies and whose vision of collective living demanded sacrifice. 

Music is central to the storytelling, with traditional Shaker hymns reinterpreted and staged with striking physicality. The result is immersive rather than reverential, driven by rhythm and bodies in motion. Seyfried’s performance anchors the film with a focused commitment. She sheds any trace of romanticism, portraying Lee as fervent, exacting and often isolated by the magnitude of her belief. 

Amanda Seyfried's performance is built on control: vocal, physical and emotional, and marks a decisive step further into complex dramatic territory

Producer Andrew Morrison with Amanda Seyfried,

Mona Fastvold & David Blumberg at the Berlinale. 

Opposite Lewis Pullman, Thomasin McKenzie, Matthew Beard and Christopher Abbott, she commands the frame with a stillness that can fracture into intensity without warning. It is a performance built on control, vocal, physical and emotional, and marks a decisive step further into complex dramatic territory.

That dialogue between restraint and assertion even carried into her festival appearances. For the evening premiere, Seyfried pivoted toward high glamour. 

A sheer, sequined gown shimmered under flashbulbs, styled with Tiffany gold and diamond jewellery that underscored the scale of the occasion. Longtime stylist Elizabeth Stewart crafted a look that felt celebratory without excess, allowing texture and light to carry the statement rather than volume.

For the Grand Hyatt photocall, Seyfried chose head-to-toe Miu Miu, demonstrating a sharp understanding of narrative dressing, a black Spring 2026 dress. Sleeveless and cut to a knee-length A-line, it balanced delicacy with edge through intricate lacework and deliberate cutouts that revealed flashes of pale blue beneath. 

Music is central to the storytelling, with traditional Shaker hymns reinterpreted and staged with striking physicality

Amanda Seyfried wore head-to-toe Miu Miu 

in a crocheted black A-line dress plus the 

Italian label's signature slingbacks. 

Ruffled shoulders softened the line, but the transparency ensured the look never tipped into nostalgia. It was modern and slightly provocative, a contemporary counterpoint to the disciplined world depicted on screen. On her feet: the house’s patent leather buckle slingbacks, a pointed silhouette sharpened by triple straps and polished metal hardware.  

During the Berlin press conference, Seyfried spoke candidly about seeking projects that challenge her craft and justify time away from family life. She described The Testament of Ann Lee as demanding but creatively expansive, a production driven by clear vision and collaborative trust. 

Released within days of her commercial thriller The Housemaid, the film highlights her range, one a box-office hit, the other a formally ambitious meditation on belief and leadership. In Berlin, Seyfried said she wanted to explore conviction, authority and the cost of ideological purity. 

Scroll down to see highlights from the red-carpet premiere of the film at the Berlinale

76th Berlin Film Festival: Queen at Sea ~ Juliette Binoche Steers Through a Storm of Memory as Lance Hammer Drops Anchor in the German Captital

French actor Juliette Binoche braves the cold on the red carpet in Berlin. Photograph (above) and cover picture of Dua Lipa by Jay Zoo for DAM

Day six of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival delivered one of the Competition’s most arresting arrivals as Queen at Sea premiered at the Berlinale Palast. Fronted by Juliette Binoche alongside Tom Courtenay and directed by Lance Hammer, the film cuts through festival glamour with bracing emotional clarity. In a week of global premieres, this London-set drama stands out for its unsentimental examination of family, care and the limits of love. Photography by Jay Zoo 

Film director Lance Hammer with actors 

Tom Courtenay, Anna Calder-Marshall

and Juliette Binoche at the official 

photocall at the Berlin Film Festival. 

ON another snowy February afternoon at the Berlinale, the competition slate was headed by the premiere of Queen at Sea. Day six of the film festival unfolded in flashes of winter light and camera bulbs as the cast gathered first for the photocall, then ascended the red carpet at the Berlinale Palast, where Europe’s first major festival of the year continues to test the emotional temperature of cinema.

At the photocall, Juliette Binoche stood composed yet quietly radiant, flanked by Tom Courtenay, Anna Calder-Marshall and rising star Florence Hunt. Their presence signalled the film’s generational sweep: three women bound by love, conflict and the slow erosion of memory. Directed by Lance Hammer, the drama marks his long-awaited return to feature filmmaking and arrives in Berlin as one of the Competition’s most emotionally rigorous entries.

The film’s generational sweep encompasses three women bound by love, conflict and the slow erosion of memory.

Florence Hunt plays Juliette 

Binoche's daughter in the film.

As evening fell, Binoche re-emerged in a sweeping silhouette with a faux-fur jacket, white shirt and pleated black trousers for the premiere, pausing for photographers against a curtain of wintry darkness. 

The mood was elegant but restrained, a fitting prelude to a film that refuses sentimentality in its portrait of dementia and familial fracture. Courtenay, ever the understated national treasure, greeted the crowd with gentle warmth, while Hunt embodied the new generation stepping into a complicated inheritance.

Inside the Palast, the audience encountered a work of bracing honesty: a story set in an atmospheric suburban London, where the director examines care, consent and the uncomfortable truths that surface when love is no longer enough. In a festival week that has stretched from the Australian outback to Depression-era America, Queen at Sea proved that the most turbulent waters are often found within the home, and that Berlin remains a harbour for cinema unafraid to confront them. ~ Jeanne-Marie Cilento

Scroll down to see the red-carpet arrivals of the cast of the Queen at Sea at the Berlin Film Festival

76th Berlin International Film Festival: Ethan Hawke Carries The Weight, a Tale of Gold, Grit and the Gravity of Fatherhood

American actor Ethan Hawke, wearing a Tom Ford by Haider Ackermann sequined suit, at the photocall for his new film in Berlin. Photograph (above) and cover picture of Dua Lipa by Jay Zoo for DAM

Ethan Hawke discussed The Weight, a lean, Depression-era drama charged with emotional urgency at the Berlin Film Festival. Playing a father coerced into smuggling gold through unforgiving wilderness to secure his freedom and reunite with his daughter, the actor delivers a gritty performance. Opposite Russell Crowe and directed by Padraic McKinley, the film blends stark action with an exploration of sacrifice, solidarity and the cost of defying institutional power. Story by Jeanne-Marie Cilento. Photography by Jay Zoo

Sam Hazeldine, Austin Amelio, Ethan Hawke,

Padraic McKinley, Avi Nash, Julia Jones and

Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen at the Berlinale.  

UNDER the winter glare of Berlin’s February light, Ethan Hawke arrived at the Grand Hyatt to present his new film at the city's film festival. The survival drama, set during the Depression in America, strips heroism down to its rawest impulse: love.

Hawke’s presence at the photocall was characteristically unforced. Dressed in a black sequined bouclé suit from Tom Ford by Haider Ackermann, offset with a narrow leather tie, he managed to look both formal and subtly subversive. The texture of the fabric caught the camera flashes without veering into ostentation; a visual metaphor, perhaps, for an actor whose career has balanced arthouse introspection with muscular mainstream roles. 

In The Weight, Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, a father living in 1933 Oregon whose life collapses when he is separated from his daughter and sent to a punishing labour camp. The premise is stark: offered a chance at early release, Murphy must transport smuggled gold through hostile wilderness under the watch of a ruthless warden, played with simmering authority by Russell Crowe. The journey becomes both a physical ordeal and a moral reckoning.

The film arrives at a moment when questions of institutional power and collective responsibility resonate sharply

Ethan Hawke joking around with film director

Padraic McKinley at their Berlin photocall. 

Directed by Padraic McKinley, the film draws on the stripped-back tension of 1970s American action cinema while grounding itself in the psychological realism that has long been Hawke’s forte. 

Wide shots of Oregon’s unforgiving terrain underscore the insignificance of the men crossing it, bent beneath the literal and symbolic weight of gold. Yet the film resists easy mythmaking. Murphy is not a conventional hero; he is exhausted, frightened and often unsure. What propels him forward is not bravado but the singular pull of fatherhood.

Speaking in Berlin, Hawke described the title as a reflection of emotional gravity, the burden of responsibility and the cost of devotion. For an actor who has built a career on exploring moral ambiguity, the role offers fertile ground. His performance is stripped of flourish, rooted instead in physicality: the slump of shoulders, the wary glance over a campfire, the quiet calculation behind the eyes. It is a study in endurance rather than spectacle.

The Berlinale has long championed films that fuse political undercurrents with intimate storytelling, and The Weight arrives at a moment when questions of institutional power and collective responsibility resonate sharply. Beneath its period setting lies a contemporary pulse: a group of disparate men discovering shared cause against systemic exploitation.

The film wastes little time on sentimentality. Instead, it delivers a taut, atmospheric examination of sacrifice and solidarity. For Hawke, now more than three decades into his career, it marks another chapter in a body of work defined by restless curiosity and moral inquiry.

76th Berlin International Film Festival: Dua Lipa on the Red Carpet in Black and White by Andrea Heinsohn