Don’t be mistaken, Daughters (now on Netflix) will rip your heart out. That’s not a warning: This is a must-see documentary whose quietly moving film earned it an audience award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and a featured release on the biggest streaming platform out there. Directed by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, the film follows four girls and their incarcerated parents as they prepare for a father-daughter dance at a Washington, D.C., prison. Though the event is organized by Patton, an activist who is executive director of the nonprofit Girls for a Change, the film isn’t propaganda; rather, it’s a deep pe into paternal relationships and the institutional failings of the American prison system. It’s also the most heartfelt and moving movie you’re likely to see all year.
DAUGHTERSSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: A group of men in orange jumpsuits sit in a circle for a discussion led by “father life coach” Chad Morris. It’s a lot like group therapy, but focused on father-daughter relationships. In eight weeks, their daughters will visit them in prison for a father-daughter dance, an increasingly rare chance for convicts to enjoy an in-person visit where they are allowed to physically touch their loved ones: Many American prisons put plexiglass between people, and more are increasingly shifting visitation procedures to video calls. Video calls for which they now charge fees and to send photos and messages. That’s why the dance is so important, a meaningful opportunity for these men, and Chad warns them that it will be a roller coaster of emotions.
We meet and follow four broken families: Aubrey is five, an outgoing, sweet-talking girl who proudly calls herself the smartest girl in her class; Lashawn is her mother; she woke up one morning to learn that her father, Keith, had been arrested while she was sleeping, and now faces a sentence of at least seven years. Santana is an energetic but sometimes hopeless 10-year-old who pointedly tells the camera that she will “never, ever” be a mother; Diamond is her mother; her father Mark is a big guy with a big, sincere heart. Ja’Ana is 11, and we meet her at her birthday party in the parking lot of an apartment complex; she says she wouldn’t recognize her father Frank’s face, because he’s been in her life only sporadically, and Frank says that her mother Unita has been pushing her away from him. Raziah is 15, and has a better understanding of the pain she feels from her father’s absence; Her mother Sherita says she found Raziah on top of her building, thinking about jumping, and we are not sure if her father Alonzo knows about this or not.
The film focuses on the fathers’ weekly sessions, where Chad leads discussions about the importance of being physically present for the boys and how they should prepare to be open and honest during the event. They’ll get new haircuts and new suits and ties at the thrift store; we watch as they give each other lessons on tie-knotting. Meanwhile, the girls live their lives with their mothers (trips to the laundromat, poignant birthday parties over someone’s absence) and prepare for the dance with new nail polish and new dresses, and meet with Angela, who leads them in cheerful “girl power” chants. (The mothers will be in the building, but not in the same room as the dance, so the focus is entirely on the fathers and daughters.) Angela also visits the men and reassures them: “They want to count on you,” she says. “They want to be there for you.” want to count on you.”
What movies will it remind you of? Pair Daughters with Ava DuVernay 13th (also on Netflix), which is a more open criticism of the American prison system.
Performance worth watching: All stories are important here, and I’ll leave it at that.
Memorable dialogue: Angela: “Forgiveness is one of the most difficult things for us as human beings.”
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: It is worth noting that the dance itself occurs in the middle part of DaughtersBecause this isn’t a movie about building dramatic tension for an inevitable release, but rather, one that follows the organic rhythms of life itself, where nothing ever really begins or ends. It just keeps flowing. The dance sequence is as heartbreaking as you’d expect: an overwhelming mix of sweetness, joy, tenderness, awkwardness, and hesitation. It’s tearful and cathartic, but only temporarily. Aubrey adorably recites the multiplication tables for Keith. Raziah greets Alonzo with hugs that can only be described as enormous. Santana and Mark hug and play fight and maybe even argue a little, their emotions understandably all over the place. Frank and Ja’Ana struggle to make eye contact, and she seems cold, but he tries, and tries again—the bond comes easier for some, but the effort is significant. An emcee cracks jokes and leads them in a group dance. The girls stand on their parents’ feet as they dance. In a moment of deep symbolism, fathers and daughters trace each other’s hands and cut them out – a touching moment, literally and figuratively.
Patton and Rae’s approach eschews the explanatory, talk-heavy format of many documentaries in favor of what might be described as slanted observation. The film develops its “characters” by emphasizing their emotional lives over pragmatic concerns; it doesn’t delve into how or why these men are in prison, and, if I may be presumptuous, it seems as if Patton’s focus is on the here and now, and the future, rather than the past, on what they did. We may find that lack of detail hard to accept, but it’s clear that Patton would prefer that we not judge these men and focus instead on who they are now and what is preparing to become a significant turning point in their lives.
That point of view is what separates us. Daughters From hard journalism. It’s an incredibly persuasive and moving op-ed whose text addresses the intensity of touch (physical contact, being in the same room breathing the same air) and the power of forgiveness. Sure, being privy to the detailed backgrounds of these men (all we have is one man who says his nickname is “Murdock,” an evolution of “Murder”) might help us better assess this last point and how much work these people need to do. But forgiveness is the ideal embedded in the film’s subtext, in its depiction of a prison system that downplays rehabilitation in lieu of punishment.
And that punishment includes years of parents being banned from being in the same room as their children. That makes the dance we see here all the more imperative to improving these people’s lives: The final half-hour follows the protagonists over the next three or four years, and the outcomes range from hopeful to hopeless. Take the cheerful Aubrey, who, at nine, hasn’t seen her father in person since the dance, and seems to have lost much of the joy in her life. And so the film asks with quiet, cutting precision: Is this improving society? And, more to the point, who exactly is being punished here?
Our calling: PASS IT ON. It’s hard to argue with DaughtersThe message concludes with a sign saying that 95 percent of incarcerated men who participate in the father-daughter dance do not return to prison. It is a critique of an institution. Punishment is a failure.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
