Daughters centers on a real-life event that is emotional catnip—a dance for daughters and their incarcerated fathers—but the documentary, like the men it features, earns its way to that overwhelming moment. We’re introduced to the men early on in the 10-week coaching program designed to prepare them for the dance, when some of them will be meeting their child face to face for the first time. Mirroring that emotional and psychological labor is the eight years that filmmaker Natalie Rae and Girls For A Change CEO Angela Patton, credited as co-directors, spent with these families. Scenes of the men’s group sessions are interspersed with segments following their daughters and the mothers of their daughters going about their lives without them on the outside. After the dance itself—which will wring you out, without a doubt—Daughters includes a significant, clear-eyed epilogue that revisits the featured families a few years later. Throughout, the images are handsomely lit—appropriate for a film arguing for the dignity of all involved—and occasionally piercing. When the line of men sitting in profile all lean forward as their daughters come down the hall in their dresses, it’s the sort of exquisite camera blocking that just can’t be planned. In this moment and elsewhere, Daughters registers as a bracing and necessary reminder—along with Sing Sing, a prison-set feature from 2024—that these are human beings behind bars.
(8/9/2024)
