Credits: Martin Kraft / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0.
A guest of Laurent Delahousse, Joséphine Japy, 31, 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 actor-director linked the work and life, saying that the late diagnosis of her sister’s disability lifted her fear of transmission and made this double birth possible. A leading figure of films and TV shows with Josephine Japy, Josephine Japy films and TV programs, she was also presenting “Qui brille au combat.”
On the Set of “20h30 Le Dimanche,” a Measured Confession
Some sentences suddenly shift the axis of a life. A guest of Laurent Delahousse on the program 20h30 le dimanche on France 2, in Paris, on December 7, 2025, Joséphine Japy, 31, found the right words to connect her trajectory as an artist 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. In addition, she announced she is pregnant with her first child. The admission arose during a discussion about the autobiographical aspect of the film. The work now completed paves the way for another adventure, more private and more irreversible.
Throughout the interview, she seems careful not to give in to the spectacular. The news was not dropped as a flashy stunt, but delivered with sobriety, almost smuggled in. It emerged as the long years of uncertainty experienced by her family around a genetic diagnosis were discussed. When she says that this film and this pregnancy come from the same intimate movement, her intention becomes clear. She is not looking for coincidence, but for harmony.
A First Film Shaped by a Family Story
Set on the French Riviera, “Qui brille au combat” follows siblings confronted with the severe disability of the youngest. The elder wavers, the parents reorganize, and the home becomes a place of vigilance and tenderness. This happens with the dissonances one expects. The cast steps back behind human-scale direction. It favors true voices, uncovered looks, and silences that stand in for dialogue. The title is not a boast. It is drawn from the etymology of Joséphine’s sister’s name, Bertille, “she who shines in battle.” It is like a viaticum passed down through language. It appears in Joséphine Japy’s biographical notes and in the official presentation of the film, where it is described as a first feature film.
The film premiered in a world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, in a Special Screening. Its French release is announced for December 31, 2025. Again, the schedule says something about the gesture. A premiere at Cannes is a trial by light. A year-end release means facing the bustle of the holidays and the harshness of year-end assessments. Moreover, it stakes a claim to a slow story, attentive to the grain of days.
Twenty-Five Years of Uncertainty: The Diagnosis That Redirects a Life
At the center is Bertille, the younger sister, and a long detour before the disease was named. The family endured twenty-five years of uncertainty before a diagnosis finally shed light on what, until then, resisted categories. Phelan-McDermid syndrome, most 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 singular.
One might think, reading these lines, that stating it is enough. It is not. For the Japys, medical knowledge was first a paper episode, then an intimate upheaval. Naming it meant stopping the wandering from consultation to consultation. Naming it also shifted deeper fears tied to supposed heredity and mentally shelved plans. In addition, one writes in that mental notebook the desire for a child without daring to admit it.
The Fear of Transmission and the Liberty Regained
Joséphine Japy said it simply: the fear of passing on a rare disease to her future children had held her back for a long time. When her mother assured her that she was not a carrier of the gene in question, a lock opened. She does not use grand words, but she simply recounts the lifting of a brake tied to the invisible. Indeed, this brake was more due to the invisible than to the arrangement of things. Her pregnancy, now publicly acknowledged, is not a front-page event but the consequence of an inner thaw. It fits the same dynamic as directing Qui brille au combat: an effort of linking between art and life, between fiction and experience. One thinks of filmmakers who, without slipping into raw testimony, revisit their sensitive genealogy to bring forth a shared narrative.
An Actress Behind the Camera
We know Joséphine Japy for roles in films and TV series where she often held the clear note amid complex scores: “Respire” by Mélanie Laurent, “Mon inconnue” by Hugo Gélin, “Eugénie Grandet” after Balzac, not to mention “Tapie” in which she portrayed Dominique Tapie. Moving behind the camera at 30 was no whim. The decision emerged after a short shoot, filmed in the south of France, close to the family locales. Indeed, it was there that family memory had taken shape. Actor direction, she says, was a school of humility. Guiding Mélanie Laurent while erasing the former mentoring relationship was essential. Moreover, giving Pierre-Yves Cardinal the latitude for a stubbornly earthy performance was important. Supporting the young actresses who carry the film also shaped a unique gaze. She found the balance between formal rigor and the tact required by a vulnerable subject.
In this turn to directing, one also reads a way of recovering power over the narrative. For a long time, the family had to deal with a language of others: that of doctors, tests, acronyms piling up. The film proposes another grammar, both documented and novelistic, that denies neither the ordeal nor the joy. The main issue comes through: to state the place of art in our lives. Indeed, this is not a mere escape. On the contrary, it is a way of inhabiting the real more fully.
Cannes 2025 and the December 31, 2025 Release: Calendar and Expectations
Presented in Special Screening on the Croisette in the spring, “Qui brille au combat” aroused attentive curiosity. The release date of December 31, 2025 ties a paradoxical alliance: an introspective film at the heart of a festive period. This choice claims a different temporality. One does not go to it to “close out the year,” but to open a listening. Critical buzz has focused on the film’s restraint. In particular, it highlights how it avoids pathos. In addition, the economy of its effects was noted. Nevertheless, it manages to show the fatigue and determination of loved ones.
The media schedule may have sown doubt about the exact date of the televised interview. Some publications mentioned December 6, others the 7th. The Sunday did fall on December 7, 2025, so the announcement belongs to that weekend, captured in the live broadcast of a program where speech is not a spectacular commodity. This clarification is less nitpicking than a concern for accuracy. It recalls the requirement: to care for contexts and dates, because a film never arrives alone.
The Ecology of the Intimate: An Ethics of Care
We must pause on what the film stakes: not disease as fatality, but the continuity of care as a moral ecology. For Joséphine Japy, the intimate is never sealed off. It opens onto a discreet sharing: repetitive gestures, readjustments, attention to subtle signals. In the thread of the Sunday program, the announced pregnancy takes its place beside the film as another strand of meaning: transmitting otherwise, not by genes, but by the stories one offers the community. The camera here is not a mirror; it is a tool of consideration.
This ethic also requires the precision of words. No medical speculation blurs the memory. Phelan-McDermid syndrome is described in the scientific literature and associative resources with a clarity that rejects sensationalism. The film does not claim to explain. It shows. It listens. In that, it accords with the best of French cinema. Indeed, this cinema knows how to reconnect with chronicle and nuance at regular intervals.
Private Life and Discretion: The Essential Without Indiscretion
News of a pregnancy always invites the temptation of indiscretion. Joséphine Japy gave nothing to that inclination. She simply said she is expecting a child. She also recalled the past fears linked to heredity. Then she confirmed that she was not a carrier of the anomaly in question. Finally, she thanked, obliquely, the late diagnosis that “changed her life.” It is known that her partner, Nicolas, plays a role in cinema and that he produced the film. That is enough. The rest belongs to her. For an actor-director who knows she is observed, this choice of restraint weighs heavily.
It draws the line of separation between what is given to the public and what remains in the shadows of homes.
Caution is all the more necessary because images circulate from editorial image banks where rights are regulated. Current iconography has its logic. It should not take precedence over the wishes of those involved. Here, one will stick to authorized photographs, and to the sobriety appropriate for private events.
What This Announcement Says About French Cinema Today
It would be wrong to see in this televised confession only a celebrity anecdote. What it tells, more deeply, is the path of an artist. Moreover, it expands her sphere 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 tested a variety of registers. The gesture matters: filming the intimate without seizing it. Also, opening the stage to bodies and sensibilities often confined to the margins. Finally, refusing shortcuts.
One thinks of what cinema can achieve 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 that, Qui brille au combat fits into a history ranging from chronicle to family novel. Moreover, it moves from portrait to symphony of gestures. Cultural industries ask where to house the intimate. This answer is a clear-eyed and powerful wager.
Counterpoint of the Intimate: Work and Life Come Into Harmony
The scene returns, stubborn. A public service studio hosts an artist. She explains where she speaks from. Thus, a film binds experience to sharing. The announcement of an upcoming birth is not an appendix to promotion; it is its counterpoint. One leaves the program feeling that life has found its rhythm: a shoot is 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 rests something within herself. The essential is there. The rest will be told later, in a low voice, in the room of a newborn. That child will know nothing of television sets, but will learn, early on, the power of stories.
Video unavailable