DAUGHTERS

It's hard not to be affected by 'Daughters'; from hearing Raziah talk candidly about her mental health issues due to the absence of her father, to seeing Aubrey cover her home with school certificates to make her father proud, each daughter has enough story to fill an entire documentary of her own. We learn the names of their fathers, but never the circumstances that have led to their incarceration, a chance for them to grow from their past and commit to being the men they explicitly promise their daughters that they can be. The scenes in prison are bookended with grainy, home video-style footage of the girls, hinting towards the life moments their fathers are missing. It's a risky move that doesn't land; perhaps real photos and videos of the girls over time would have been less picturesque and aesthetic, but they would've felt more authentic.

Even so, the Daddy Daughter Dance scene is some of the hardest crying I have done in a cinema all year. Watching Aubrey optimistically count with her father how long he has left in prison – she keeps trying to bargain eight years down to seven with him – is enough to crack even the hardest of audiences. 'Daughters' could've ended with a montage about how great the program is and the promising statistic that 95 per cent of fathers who participate in the program stay out of prison afterwards, which flashes before the credits. However, it boldly decides to examine the aftermath of fathers and daughters finally being able to share a hug. In the years after the dance, we learn that some daughters have not gone to visit their fathers, or that some have been reunited fully after release from prison. By the time we see Aubrey again at 8 years old, her hopefulness has heartbreakingly cauterised into something more stoic.

I wanted to see 'Daughters' go into more details of this clearly beneficial program; the 10-week lead up to the dance appears to only involve a handful of meetings of the fathers talking about the importance of fatherhood with a coach, and getting measured up for thrift-store suits. We never see the girls preparing for the dance either, and it is never suggested that some of them might struggle with the program. It's obvious that Santana and Ja'Ana have one foot out the door, the effects of their fathers' incarceration unable to be fixed by a simple evening of connection; this is, however, completely glossed over. This is no doubt the consequence of Patton being both in front of and behind the camera. It's hard to keep your filmmaking partial when the onscreen vehicle for change is also the one guiding how the story is being told.

'Daughters' isn't afraid to shine a light on the traumatised children and destroyed families that are the result of separation, yet it doesn't feel anywhere near frustrated enough that these families are in this situation in the first place. There is no anger that a father's parole is inexplicably extended; it's simply accepted as yet another hurdle on the journey to reunion. I'm not saying that a 107-minute Netflix documentary needs to solve the U.S. prison system, but leaving audiences with a call to action to drive change could have gone a long way. The film rightfully earns an insane amount of audience emotional buy-in and could play on this way more than it does.

I'll be thinking about the stories from 'Daughters' for a long time, even if I don't think about the documentary itself. Rae and Patton have a long way to go in terms of their storytelling skills, but 'Daughters' is worth the frustrations and will still move many to tears.