Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Daughters’ on Netflix, a Tearjerking Portrait of Daughters and Their Incarcerated Fathers

Make no mistake, Daughters (now on Netflix) will rip your heart out. That’s not a warning – this is a must-see documentary whose quiet poignancy earned it an audience award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and prominent release on the biggest streaming platform out there. Directed by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, the film follows four girls and their incarcerated fathers as they prepare for a father-daughter dance at a Washington, D.C. prison. Although the event is organized by Patton, an activist who’s CEO of the Girls for a Change nonprofit, the film isn’t propaganda; rather, it’s a profound examination of paternal relationships and the institutional flaws of the American prison system. It’s also the most sincere tearjerker you’re likely to see all year.

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Commandant’s Shadow’ on Max, an Extraordinary Documentary About the Lingering Fallout From Auschwitz

The Gist: A group of orange-jumpsuited men sit in a circle for a discussion led by “fatherhood life coach” Chad Morris. It’s a lot like group therapy, but focused on dad-daughter relationships. In eight weeks, their daughters will visit them in prison for a father-daughter dance, an increasingly rare opportunity for convicts to enjoy an in-person visit where they’re allowed to physically touch their loved ones – many American prisons put plexiglass between people, and are increasingly shifting visitation procedures to video calls. Video calls for which they charge fees now, and to send photos and messages. That’s why the dance is huge, a significant opportunity for these men, and Chad warns them that it’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster.

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Here to Climb’ on Max, a Documentary Look At The Life and Career of Rock Climber Sasha DiGiulian

We meet and follow four broken families: Aubrey is five, an outgoing and sweetly chatty kid who proudly calls herself the smartest kid in her class; Lashawn is her mother; she woke up one morning to learn that her dad, Keith, had been arrested while she slept, and now faces a sentence of at least seven years. Santana is a spirited but sometimes despairing 10-year-old who pointedly tells the camera that she’ll “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 her mother Unita has been keeping her from him. Raziah is 15, and more acutely understands the pain she feels from her father’s absence; her mother Sherita says she found Raziah on top of their building, contemplating jumping off, and we’re not sure if her dad Alonzo knows about this or not.

CLICK HERE TO GET EMAILS FROM DECIDER

The film drops in on the fathers’ weekly group sessions, where Chad leads discussions on the importance of being physically present for children, and how they should prepare themselves to be open and honest during the event. They’ll get haircuts and fresh suits and ties from the thrift store; we watch as they give each other lessons on how to tie a tie. Meanwhile, the girls live their lives with their mothers – trips to the laundromat, birthday parties rendered poignant by who isn’t there – and prep for the dance with fresh nail polish and new dresses, and meeting with Angela, who leads them in upbeat “girl power” chants. (The mothers will be in the building but not in the same room as the dance, so the focus is wholly on fathers and daughters.) Angela also visits the men and reassures them: “They want to count on you,” she says. “They want to count on you.”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Pair Daughters with Ava DuVernay’s 13th (also on Netflix), which is a more overt criticism of the American prison system.

Performance Worth Watching: All the stories are important here, and I’ll leave it at that.

Memorable Dialogue: Angela: “Forgiving is one of the hardest things for us to do as humans.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Notably, the dance itself occurs in the middle portion of Daughters , because this isn’t a film about building dramatic tension for inevitable release, but rather, one that follows the organic rhythms of life itself, where nothing truly begins or ends. It just keeps flowing. The dance sequence is as wrenching as you’d expect – an overwhelming melange of the sweet, joyous, cute, awkward, tentative. It’s tearfully cathartic, but only temporarily. Aubrey adorably recites times tables for Keith. Raziah greets Alonzo with hugs that can only be described as massive. Santana and Mark hug and play-fight and maybe even argue a little, her emotions understandably all over the road. Frank and Ja’Ana struggle to make eye contact, and she seems chilly, but he tries, and tries again; bonding is easier for some, but the effort is meaningful. An emcee cracks jokes and leads them in a group dance. Little girls stand on their dads’ feet as they dance. In a bit of profound symbolism, dads and daughters trace each other’s hands and cut them out – a touching moment, literally and figuratively.

Patton and Rae’s form sidesteps the talking-heads explanatory format of many documentaries, settling on what’s best described as biased observation. The film develops its “characters” by emphasizing their emotional lives over pragmatic concerns; it doesn’t get 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, the what-they-did. We may struggle with that lack of detail, but it’s clear that Patton would rather we withhold judgment on these men, and look at who they are now and what’s gearing up to be a significant pivot point in their lives.

That point-of view is what separates Daughters from hard journalism. It’s an incredibly persuasive and moving op-ed whose text addresses the poignancy of touch – physical contact, being in the same room breathing the same air – and the power of forgiveness. Sure, being privy to in-depth backgrounds on these men (all we get is one man saying his nickname is “Murdock,” an evolution from “Murder”) might help us gauge that latter point better, and how much work these people need to put in. But forgiveness is the ideal embedded in the film’s subtext, in its depiction of a prison system that deemphasizes rehabilitation in lieu of punishment.

And that punishment includes years of fathers prohibited from being in the same room as their children. That makes the dance we see here even more imperative in improving these peoples’ lives – the final half-hour tracks the principals over the next three-to-four years, and the results range from hopeful to despairing. Take bubbly Aubrey, for instance, who, at nine years old, hasn’t seen her father in person since the dance, and seems to have had a lot of the joy drained from her life. And so the film asks with quiet, cutting precision, is this making society better? And more pointedly, who exactly is being punished here?

Our Call: STREAM IT. It’s hard to argue with Daughters ’ message – it concludes with a title card stating that 95 percent of incarcerated men who participate in the father-daughter dance don’t return to prison again. It’s an indictment of an institution. Punishment is failure.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

For more entertainment news and streaming recommendations, visit decider.com