Guest of Laurent Delahousse, Joséphine Japy, 31 years old, announced live that she is expecting her first child while presenting Qui brille au combat, her first feature film inspired by her family history. On the set of 20h30 le dimanche in Paris, on December 7, 2025, the actress-director connected the work and life, confessing that the late diagnosis of her sister’s disability lifted her fear of transmission and made this double birth possible. A leading figure in films and TV programs, she also presented "Qui brille au combat."
On the set of "20h30 le dimanche," a measured confidence
There are phrases that suddenly shift the axis of a life. Guest of Laurent Delahousse on the show 20h30 le dimanche on France 2, in Paris, on December 7, 2025, Joséphine Japy, 31 years old, found the right words to connect her artistic trajectory and her personal history. She presented Qui brille au combat, her first feature film as a director. This film is inspired by her own family. Furthermore, she announced she is pregnant with her first child. The admission emerged during a discussion about the autobiographical aspect of the film. The now-completed work opens the way to another adventure, more secret and more irrevocable.
Throughout the interview, she seems careful not to yield to the spectacular. The news was not dropped as a flashy statement but delivered with sobriety, almost clandestinely. It emerged as the long years of uncertainty experienced by her family around a genetic diagnosis were discussed. When she confides that this film and this pregnancy stem from the same intimate movement, her intention becomes clear. She is not seeking coincidence but harmony.
A first film shaped by a family story
Set on the French Riviera, "Qui brille au combat" follows siblings facing the severe disability of the youngest. The eldest wavers, the parents organize, and the house becomes a place of vigilance and tenderness. This is done with the known dissonances. The cast fades behind a human-scale direction. It favors true voices, open looks, and silences that serve as dialogue. The title is not a bravado. It is drawn from the etymology of Joséphine’s sister’s name, Bertille, "she who shines in battle." It’s like a viaticum passed down through language. It is found in the biographical notes of Joséphine Japy and in the official presentation of the film, where it is stated to be a first feature film.
The film was presented in a world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, in a Special Screening. Its French release is announced for December 31, 2025. Again, the schedule says something about the gesture. A premiere in Cannes is a trial by light. A year-end release means facing the tumult of the holidays and the harshness of year-end reviews. Moreover, it claims a slow story, attentive to the grain of days.
Twenty-five years of uncertainty: the diagnosis that reorients a life
At the center is Bertille, the younger sister, and a long detour before the name of the disease. The family went through twenty-five years of uncertainty before a diagnosis finally illuminated what had resisted categorization until then. The Phelan-McDermid syndrome, often linked to an anomaly affecting the SHANK3 gene on chromosome 22q13.3, is frequently accompanied by global developmental delay, language deficit, and can manifest as autism spectrum disorders. It is a rare disease, described by reference knowledge bases, whose variability makes each journey unique.
One might think, reading these lines, that the statement suffices. It does not. For the Japy family, medical knowledge was first a paper adventure, then an intimate upheaval. Naming it meant stopping the wandering from consultation to consultation. Naming it also meant shifting more secret fears related to supposed heredity and mentally recorded projects. Furthermore, in this mental notebook, the desire for a child is inscribed without daring to admit it.
The fear of transmission and regained freedom
Joséphine Japy said it simply: the fear of transmitting a rare disease to her future children had long held her back. When her mother assured her that she was not a carrier of the gene in question, a lock was released. She does not use grand words, but she simply recounts the lifting of a barrier related to the invisible. Indeed, this barrier was more due to the invisible than to the arrangement of things. Her pregnancy, now publicly acknowledged, is not a cover story but the result of an internal thaw. It is part of the same dynamic as the making of Qui brille au combat: a process of connecting art and life, fiction and experience. One thinks of those filmmakers who, without resorting to raw testimony, revisit their sensitive genealogy to bring forth a shared narrative.
An actress turned director
Joséphine Japy is known for roles in cinema and TV series where she often held the clear note amid complex scores: "Respire" by Mélanie Laurent, "Mon inconnue" by Hugo Gélin, "Eugénie Grandet" based on Balzac, not to mention "Tapie" in which she played Dominique Tapie. Moving behind the camera at 30 years old is not a whim. The decision emerged after a brief shoot, conducted in the south of France, close to family locations. Indeed, it is there that family memory had taken shape. Directing actors, she says, was a school of humility. Guiding Mélanie Laurent while erasing the former mentoring relationship was essential. Moreover, offering Pierre-Yves Cardinal the latitude of a stubbornly grounded performance was important. Additionally, supporting the youth of the actresses who carry the film also shaped a unique perspective. She found the balance between formal rigor and the tact required by a vulnerable subject.
In this transition to directing, one also reads a way to regain power over the narrative. For a long time, the family had to deal with a language of others: that of doctors, exams, acronyms that pile up. The film offers another grammar, both documented and novelistic, which neither denies the ordeal nor the joy. The main issue is understood: stating the place of art in our lives. Indeed, it is not a mere escape. On the contrary, it is a way to inhabit more of the real.
Cannes 2025 and the release on December 31, 2025: schedule and expectations
Presented in a Special Screening on the Croisette in the spring, "Qui brille au combat" aroused attentive curiosity. The release date of December 31, 2025 forms a paradoxical alliance: an introspective film at the heart of a festive period. This choice claims another temporality. It is not about making the year, but about opening a listening. The critical buzz focused on the tenor of the film. In particular, it highlights its way of avoiding pathos. Moreover, the economy of its effects was noted. However, it manages to show the fatigue and determination of the relatives.
The media schedule may have sown doubt about the exact date of the television interview. Some publications mentioned December 6, others December 7. Since Sunday indeed fell on December 7, 2025, the announcement pertains to that weekend, captured in the live of a show where speech is not a spectacular commodity. This clarification is less about nitpicking than about a concern for accuracy. It reminds us of the requirement: to care for contexts and dates, as a film never arrives alone.
The ecology of the intimate: an ethics of care
We must pause on what the film puts into play: not illness as fate, but the continuity of care as a moral ecology. For Joséphine Japy, the intimate is never closed in on itself. It opens onto a discreet sharing: repetitive gestures, readjustments, attention to weak signals. In the thread of the Sunday show, the announced pregnancy takes its place alongside the film as another thread of meaning: to transmit differently, not through genes, but through the stories we offer to the community. The camera here is not a mirror; it is a tool of consideration.
This ethics also involves the precision of words. No medical speculation blurs the memory. The Phelan-McDermid syndrome is described in scientific literature and associative resources with a clarity that refuses sensationalism. The film does not claim to explain. It shows. It listens. In this, it aligns with the best of French cinema. Indeed, this cinema knows how to reconnect with the chronicle and nuance at regular intervals.
Private life and discretion: the essential without indiscretion
The news of a pregnancy always exposes the temptation of indiscretion. Joséphine Japy has not yielded to this tendency. She simply said she was expecting a child. Moreover, she recalled the past fears related to heredity. Then, she confirmed that she was not a carrier of the anomaly in question. Finally, she thanked, implicitly, this late diagnosis that "changed her life". It is known that her partner, Nicolas, holds his place in cinema and that he produced the film. That is enough. The rest belongs to her. In the balance of an actress-director who knows she is being watched, this choice of restraint weighs heavily.
It draws the dividing line between what is given to the public. Furthermore, it shows what remains in the shadow of homes.
Prudence is all the more necessary as images circulate, from editorial banks where rights are regulated. The iconography of current events has its logic. It should not take precedence over the will of those involved. Here, we will stick to authorized photographs, and to the sobriety that is appropriate when it comes to private events.
What this announcement says about French cinema today
It would be wrong to see in this televised confidence only a celebrity anecdote. What it tells, more deeply, is the path of an artist. Moreover, it expands her area of action and rethinks her agency. Joséphine Japy does not "capitalize" on media exposure. She reconfigures the place of a first film in the career of an actress who has already experienced a variety of registers. The gesture matters: filming the intimate without confiscating it. Moreover, opening the stage to bodies and sensitivities often confined to the margins. Finally, refusing shortcuts.
One thinks of what cinema can accomplish when it redistributes roles. Alongside care professionals, associations, and families, it adds a missing image. Not to explain a disease, but to accompany a perception. In this, Qui brille au combat is part of a history ranging from the chronicle to the family novel. Moreover, it moves from the portrait to the symphony of gestures. Cultural industries wonder where to place the intimate. Yet, this response represents a lucid and powerful bet.
Counterpoint of the intimate: the work and life harmonize
The scene returns, persistent. A public service platform hosts an artist. She tells where she speaks from. Thus, a film connects experience with sharing. The announcement of an upcoming birth is not the appendix of a promotion; it is the counterpoint. We leave the show feeling that life has found its rhythm: a shooting is successfully completed. Then, a Cannes presentation takes place, followed by a release announced for December 31, 2025. In the meantime, the discreet metamorphosis of an artist occurs. By setting down the camera, she also sets something within herself. The essential is there. The rest will be told later, in a whisper, in the room of a newborn. He will know nothing of television sets, but he will learn, very early, the power of stories.