The Netflix documentary is full of valuable, moving ideas. But the way the directors shot and assembled the material takes it to a whole new level.
Photo: Netflix/Everett Collection

The new Netflix documentary Daughtersdirected by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, is a perfect example of how a subject can be elevated through sensitive, artful filmmaking. It follows the organization of a father-daughter dance between inmates at a Washington, D.C. prison and their daughters, who range in age from 5 to their mid-teens. The initiative was launched in Richmond, Virginia, in 2012 by co-director Patton herself and has since expanded. It is designed to provide a rare opportunity for girls and their incarcerated fathers, many of whom have not seen each other in years, to interact in person. The directors have said that one of their goals in producing the film is to draw attention to the fact that many prisons have abolished “touch visits” between inmates and families, leaving them to meet only via video calls or on the phone. These are all worthy ideas, and they would probably be enough to Daughters an admirable, uplifting film. But the cinematography, the way the directors shot and assembled their material, takes it to another level.

Patton and Rae spend a lot Daughtersfollows a handful of girls and their fathers as they prepare for the dance. The inmates must first complete a 10-week program in which they meet Chad Morris, a life coach who prepares them for what is sure to be a painful, surreal experience. “It’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster,” he warns them. “Because you’re going to be on a high when the dance happens, and as the clock ticks toward the end, you’re going to experience your own range of emotions.” The girls, meanwhile, confess on camera their complicated feelings about their fathers — be they feelings of abandonment, deprivation or hope. Five-year-old Aubrey, who boasts about being the smartest kid in her class, has decorated the walls of her house with certificates she won at school for once making a promise to her father, Keith. She spends her days reviewing her multiplication tables – cute, yes, but also a way to understand the cold math of prison sentences and parole and when her father might come home. Meanwhile, 11-year-old Ja’Ana, whose father Frank wasn’t even around for the first few years of her life, doesn’t quite know what to make of him. They haven’t spoken in years, and later scenes between the two, in which the father is as silent and awkward as his insecure daughter, are some of the film’s most heartbreaking.

Daughters could easily have been a standard documentary about the logistics and bureaucracy involved in organizing something like this, and might have been interesting as such. But Patton and Rae focus instead on the indelible faces at the center of their story, as the girls and the fathers impatiently await and prepare for their big day. There is deliberately no discussion of what these men were convicted of, and the documentary doesn’t show much of their daily lives as prisoners. We’ve seen all of this before in countless images. The girls know them as fathers, and the filmmakers wisely take that perspective, too. The accumulation of human detail pays off masterfully when we get to the dance itself—especially when the girls see their fathers for the first time. Some don’t even know if they’ll recognize each other. (Spoiler alert: They do.) The details shown are brief but moving: The fathers practice how to put on a tie; Patton himself informs them that her own 80-year-old father volunteers to shine his shoes before the dance. After the event, we see the piles of shoes, ties and belts lying on the floor, followed by a quick glimpse of the fathers coming out again in their orange overalls.

Only in the last act of the film do we learn that Daughters was a long-form documentary from the start—that this dance took place in 2019, and that these girls and their fathers have lived more years since then. Relationships and attitudes have changed. Sentences have changed. Some fathers have been released and are trying to get their lives back on track. Others have drifted deeper into the prison system, their ability to interact with their families severely limited. These final scenes are arguably the most devastating—not because of any great emotional revelations or narrative developments, but because they underscore the fundamental truth that the entire film boils down to: time is the most precious thing we have.