After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and winning the U.S. Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite Award at Sundance, the documentary, Daughters has garnered a lot of buzz. Daughters is a touching, PG-13 documentary from the directors Angela Patton and Natalie Rae about a unique program in a Washington, D.C. jail. This program is Date with Dad, allowing a select number of incarcerated fathers to join their daughters for a dance in the jail's gymnasium. This dance helps these young girls bond with their fathers in person and keep their relationships alive.
Prepare to shed a few tears with this one, because Daughters is honest, heartfelt, and full of faith (and I'm not just referring to religious faith). Sometimes films like this work too hard at bringing to light the hardships of minority populations in the United States. (What some have called "poverty porn" for certain films and TV shows.) Then white viewers can watch content like this and say, "Wow! I'm so much more of a compassionate person now I know about such downtrodden lives. Off to Whole Foods again for me to spend my extra money."
Daughters doesn't do "poverty porn". It isn't an indictment of the American penal system either. It's a tenderly human portrait of people working to strengthen their family, highlighting specific girls learning to persist through emotional wounds and nervous fathers attending a 10-week coaching program in the jail to be eligible for the approaching dance. This film tells these family stories with such gravity, sensitivity, and tact it feels impossible to not feel connected to them and hope for their reunions to happen.
At the dance, fathers and daughters take pictures together, eat a meal together, goof off, and most importantly, talk to each other (sometimes asking difficult questions). Daughters has a similar emotional impact to the documentaries Time (2020) and Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised) (2022) simply showing the ups and downs and complexities of black American's lives. And what makes Daughters rise above the fray is its portrayal of these different families without judgement or obtuse pity. If this film is not nominated for a number of awards next year, I will be totally disappointed.
I know I don't say this often, but please watch this film while it's available on Netflix. And better yet, watch it with your own families.
