IIn a neon-lit corridor of a Washington prison, a group of men wait nervously for their daughters to arrive for a special dance. The fathers, dressed in suits and ties, have not seen their children for months, some even years, due to their incarceration.

After a few bars, the girls finally arrive, nervous themselves. They wave shyly to their fathers, walking arm in arm to comfort each other before breaking away to hug and kiss.

“Daddy,” a girl screams and runs into her father’s arms. Tears form in his eyes.

“Daughters,” which premiered on Netflix last week, is a powerful film, an artful exploration of the impact of incarceration on families, how children deal with ambivalent grief, and the cruelty that characterizes the modern prison system.

The documentary, co-directed by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, follows four girls and their fathers as they prepare for a father-daughter dance at a correctional facility. Patton, an activist who works to empower girls of color, founded the dance to help daughters stay connected with their incarcerated fathers. “These girls just needed a way to invite their fathers into their lives in their own way,” she says in one scene.

While the girls and their mothers wait outside for the dance, the fathers inside the prison take a 10-week preparatory course – part group counseling, part bonding training – led by a life coach. In a large, sunny room, the men, dressed in orange jumpsuits, sit in a circle, listening and sharing stories about fatherhood over paper cups of coffee. Some are more reserved than others, but camaraderie quickly develops within the group, especially as the dance approaches.

At a scant 108 minutes, Daughters is intensely intimate, using close-ups, stills of nature and edited home videos to capture the litany of emotions surrounding the celebratory dance and the years that followed. Tailored, ethereal music by Kelsey Lu permeates the film’s emotional mosaic.

As virtual visits have become increasingly common in U.S. prisons in recent years, the dance is a rare opportunity for in-person contact, adding to the emotional toll on families who haven’t held each other in years. The four girls – Aubrey, 5; Santana, 10; Ja’Ana, 11; and Raziah, 15 – have each tried to cope with their fathers’ absence in their own way.

Aubrey is intelligent and bright. The walls of her room are covered with certificates and medals. But she can hardly comprehend her father’s long prison sentence of seven years. “Seven is a number very close to one, but it will take a long time because it’s years,” she says.

Although she is only five years older, Santana is much tougher than Aubrey. When the audience first meets her, Santana promises not to “shed a single tear” if her father goes back to prison after his release. “I’ve shed enough tears because he wants to keep doing bad things that he shouldn’t be doing,” she says, promising never to be a mother. “My father isn’t here, so I’m the father.”

Ja’Ana is the most nervous of all. She hasn’t seen her father for several years and isn’t sure what their reunion will bring. “I don’t even remember his face,” she says. “I don’t remember anything about my father.”

Raziah is still shaken by her father’s absence. “I miss him here,” she says through tears. According to her mother, the teenager has spoken openly about suicide on several occasions.

Daughters shows a complex range of emotions, a shared pain among all the girls, all at a critical stage of development. The girls’ feelings are complicated and overwhelming, and the documentary paints a realistic portrait of children who just want their fathers back home. It forces the audience to confront the question: who gets punished when we send fathers away and break up families?

In prison, the men realize how cycles of incarceration have affected their families. Several of the fathers grew up with incarcerated parents. Some had their daughters at an early age and spoke about a lack of support in parenting. Scenes of kinship emphasize the humanity at the heart of Daughters, showing how prisons and detention centers in the United States often fail to meet the mental and emotional needs of those incarcerated.

In addition to the joy of reunion or the fathers’ realizations, “Daughters” also offers space for the resentment and anger of the mothers left behind. With the fathers no longer there, the care falls almost exclusively to black women and girls, many of whom are featured in the documentary, if only in fleeting moments.

In one scene, Unita, Ja’Ana’s mother, has thrown a birthday party for the 11-year-old. Unita expresses anger at Ja’Ana’s father’s attempts to bond: “Why would you want to bond with her while you’re in prison when you’ve been out here the whole time and didn’t want anything to do with her?”

Frustration is an underrated aspect of the film, one that carries just as much weight as despair. It’s difficult to find a balance between the film’s various themes, which the filmmakers don’t completely fail to achieve, but don’t quite manage to do either.

The actual father-daughter dance is difficult to watch, but necessary nonetheless. The reunion between the daughters and fathers brings tears on both sides as everyone tries to enjoy the evening.

The girls, dressed in a jumble of glittering dresses, dance, exchange souvenirs and receive flowers from their fathers – a “promise” of their mutual love.

To the tune of Beyoncé’s rendition of “Before I Let Go,” a daughter sobs, “I will never, ever, ever let you go.”

In a devastating inevitability, fathers and daughters are separated again. Only two of the four girls live to see their fathers released. For the other two girls, the dance, in all its power, is a bittersweet blip in a cruel judgment.