Films navigating the often-complex dynamics that frequently shape father-daughter relationships are not a new concept. But Natalie Rae and Angela Patton’s 2024 documentary film, Daughters, redefines the standard. Offering viewers an intimate insight into the lives of young girls navigating their lives in the shadow of their father’s incarceration. The film focuses on four father-daughter pairings: Aubrey and Keith, Santana and Mark, Ja’Ana and Frank, and Raziah and Alonzo.
Since 2014, countless US prisons have stopped allowing in-person visitations. Instead offering only video calls between the incarcerated and their loved ones at a financial cost. Daughters is co-directed by Angela Patton, who created the ‘Date with Dad’ program, which brings the Daddy-Daughter dance into the prison system. Allowing girls and their fathers the opportunity to create special memories despite incarceration. Before launching ‘Date with Dad’, Patton founded ‘Girls for a Change’. Running empowerment groups for young Black girls to teach self-love, to heal families impacted by incarceration and domestic issues. Which in turn helps strengthen communities.
Rae and Patton’s casual filmmaking style present in Daughters allows the audience the most candid of insights into the lives of the children featured. The film does not contain any classic documentary interview styles, such as ‘talking head’ or studio interviews. Instead, the audience are present with the families at their homes. At their celebrations. And follows them completing everyday errands, such as doing laundry. The filmmakers are never seen, and their voices are never heard. Instead the full focus of the film is on the girls as they navigate life without their fathers.
Keith and Lashawn’s 5-year-old daughter Aubrey recounts her times tables to an unseen interviewer. Exclaiming that she is the smartest in her class, as the camera pans around her certificates plastered over every wall of her bedroom. The audience attends the birthday party of Frank and Unita’s daughter Ja’Ana. Witnessing her singing and dancing with her friends as they engage in the festivities. The audience here is attending a party that Ja’Ana’s father will never be able to attend. And a milestone that can never be repeated upon his release from the US prison system.
The documentary also visits the men in prison as they participate in the ten-week coaching program they are required to undertake in order to attend the dance. The men discuss how several only signed up at first because they viewed it as an opportunity to see their daughters in person. After having already missed out on so much of their young lives.
But Angela’s ‘Date with Dad’ program is so much more than an additional visitation. The coaching program on fatherhood and responsible parenting, led by Chad, provides the men a space to discuss their thoughts and feelings on fatherhood. And the impact of missing out on key everyday moments with their children.
As the documentary reaches the dance, the film cuts between shots of the men and their daughters as it builds up to their reunion. Shots of the men inside the prison teaching each other how to tie a tie brings to light the stark truths of their imprisonment. These are men who have missed out on so many of their own milestones. From high school proms, to weddings, to jobs, exemplified by their unfamiliarity with formal dress.
Both parties line up to take a group photo before their reunion. Sunlight dapples gently across the excited and awaiting faces of the girls. Providing a striking visual difference to the stillness of the harsh artificial light the fathers pose under inside the prison. Representing the girl’s freedom and their fathers lack of.
The film’s epilogues provide the most poignant moments, the first taking place one year after the dance. It is Aubrey’s birthday, and three photographs of Keith sit on the kitchen table. His grey prison attire a stark contrast to the brightly iced cupcakes for his daughter’s birthday. On-screen text reveals to the audience that Aubrey’s dad Keith has had his sentence finalised at ten years. Three years longer than initially hoped for. So many of the earlier scenes with Aubrey involve her counting out the years she will be apart from her father. And working out how old she will be when he returns home. Making the extension on his sentence even more devastating.
The second epilogue demonstrates the positive impact as a result of Patton’s programs. We revisit Santana and Mark. Who for the first time in his life has been out of prison for more than six months. Mark has been free for four years, and he and Santana’s mother have had a fourth daughter. The audience is given a candid perspective into the family’s life after incarceration. Eating dinner at a restaurant with the whole family, Santana laughs, Mark is able to be present in his daughter’s life. But it is evident how the impact of his incarceration falls disproportionately on Santana.
It is likely his younger three daughters will have no recollection of a life with their father inside. Instead only knowing the changed Mark. Who is able to go to dinners, sports games, and watch television on the sofa with them. The Santana shown in the epilogue is worlds away from the 10-year-old the audience first met. Who seemed heavy with the responsibility of helping her mother look after her infant sisters. She stands outside as a thunderstorm rolls in and soaks her. She is able to enjoy the small moments of life and childhood, and her father is there to witness them.
Raziah attends her high school graduation, without her father Alonzo by her side. When the audience is first introduced to a 15-year-old Raziah, she expresses her deep sadness that her father is missing out on so many milestones throughout her childhood, and into young adulthood. Despite her distress as a result of her father’s absence, Raziah is triumphant. She waves her diploma stating “I wish he was here, he wishes he was here too, I did this for us”.
Aubrey is now 9, she has lost the baby tone to her voice, her short bob haircut replaced by long braids reaching down her back. Keith has been moved across the prison system and has been incarcerated in three different states since the last time we saw him. The camera joins Aubrey as she travels for her visit with her father since the dance. And her demeanour has transformed from the little girl who begged her father to be picked up one more time.
Keith is on the phone when she is in the car on the way home. He tells Aubrey how he brags about her. Tells everyone how smart she is and misses her, but is met with only a quiet “okay”. She is tired and rests her head on the window. The transformation of the talkative and confident little girl the audience first met in the first scene of the film, into the child with a palpable sadness is undoubtably one of the most devastating of the film.
Rae and Patton successfully demonstrate the impact of parental incarceration through every heart-breaking scene, and every joyful moment, with their film containing multitudes of both. It feels important to note that the reason for the men’s incarceration is never discussed. This intentional emission ensures that the audience is not able to form opinions or bias over whether or not the men ‘deserve’ to be incarcerated.
Ultimately, the film focuses on the impact of the children. And it is without question that the girls all deserve to have their fathers be present in their lives. As Patton says in the film’s opening montage ““our daddies are our mirrors we look back on when we figure out what man we deserve”.
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