©Courtesy of Netflix
After winning Festival Favorite and Audience Award: U.S. Documentary Competition at the last Sundance Film Festival, Daughters by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton finds its streaming platform on Netflix.
The documentary focuses on the Daddy Daughter Dance, a program run in a Washington D.C. jail that allows incarcerated men to spend a party day with their daughters. Daughters show the preparation for this unique event, both inside and outside the wall of the prison. While the young girls must try to connect with a father that they know almost only by his absence, the men are helped by a professional therapist in a 12-weeks program before the Dance.
This documentary is truly about trying to build the relationship between a daughter and her father. The context is never exploited to point a finger, to drive the audience to pity the convicted men or the estranged kids. The viewer doesn’t get to know for example the crime committed by those men because that’s not the point of the story Rae and Patton want to tell. Daughters doesn’t want to address the crack in the system, on the contrary its goal is to explain that even through the struggle of a conviction, sometimes one as long as twenty years, it is still possible to be or to remain a father. One day at the time, starting with a dance.
©Courtesy of Netflix
The editing by Adelina Bichis and Troy Lewis follows with intensity the emotional journey on both sides and at the same time is capable of creating the sense of anticipation about the Daddy Daughter Dance. The different relationships that the prisoners have with their daughters is remarkably explained through the eyes of these men, sometimes incapable of expressing their feelings if not with silence filled with emotions.
Regret for their actions, worry for not being able to express their love, fear to be judged by their own daughter: all of this is recorded by a camera that doesn’t unnecessarily underscore drama, just shows a situation which is already and truly dramatic. And when the Daddy Daughter Dance finally arrives, the audience can experience the whole humanity of these people, both the adults and the kids who try to build something meaningful with the short span of time they have. It is not easy, it can definitely be painful, but it is worth trying.
©Courtesy of Netflix
Daughters doesn’t end with the joy of the event though. The sense of hope, the will to keep trying must be tested by the fact that there is still a sentence, maybe even a long one. The documentary then keeps showing how life goes on especially for the young girls, covering a few years after the Dance. Some convicted men fully did their time, and once out of jail were able to rejoin their family and have a true second chance. Others had to remain under the bars for longer, making it more difficult to remember and hold that day of joy and hope.
Because this is life, this is what it means to be an incarcerated man, and Daughters has absolutely no intention to forget or hide it. The documentary’s intent is to prove that daughters need their fathers even when they are locked in jail, and these men need to see and feel themselves as important figures for their daughters despite their conviction. Daddy Daughter Dance is a program that gives both of them a chance to connect, to establish a link, not to solve problems. There is not a right solution in Daughters, just the necessary endorsement of a program that every prison in the United States should embrace.
The presence of sheer humanity, together with the absence of melodrama, are the reasons Daughters is one of the best documentaries seen this year. Please look for it on Netflix, it is absolutely worth it.
©Courtesy of Netflix
Rate: B+
If you like the articles, share your thoughts below!
Check out more of Adriano’s articles.
Here’s the trailer for Daughters: