Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s emotionally charged and lovingly crafted Daughters looks at a meaningful and potentially life altering form of rehabilitation for incarcerated persons, as four young girls and their imprisoned fathers make preparations for a daddy-daughter dance inside of a prison.
Patton and Rae examine what it means to be a father and a daughter caught up in the prison industrial complex from both points of view. Through concurrent, interlocking programs that give fatherless daughters opportunities to reconnect with distant parents on their own terms and an adult component that can help men cope with the strain of being an absentee figure in their children’s lives, there emerges a sliver of hope for these relationships.
Daughters looks at an uncommon practice that can mean a lot for the kids and adults involved. In the case of most of these men (many of whom are serving long or lifetime sentences), they are only ever offered costly, hard to come by TV conferences with their children, and almost never afforded any sort of physical touch or interaction. It’s a hard road for these people – young and old, alike – to reach a moment of semi-normalcy, because years of absence has left an indelible mark on both sides of the prison bars.
There’s a lot of set-up leading up to the dance, but Patton and Rae make it all worthwhile when the big day arrives, bursting with emotion. Daughters films the dance like how a memory feels, and observing the goings on from a respectful, but still intimate distance packs a major punch. Overlaps, differences, and similar struggles between fathers, mothers, and children alike come into sharper focus when everyone is in the same room together, and the power of the dance – no matter how fleeting it is in the grand scheme of life – is unquestionably moving. Few films have advocated for outside the box ideas for reforming the prison system as eloquently and gracefully as Daughters.
Friday, April 26, 2024 – 9:30 pm – TIFF Lightbox 3
Saturday, April 27, 2024 – 10:30 am – TIFF Lightbox 2
Saturday, May 4, 2024 – 5:00 pm – Scotiabank 7
Daughters previously screened as part of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Join our list
Subscribe to our mailing list and get weekly updates on our latest contests, interviews, and reviews.
Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong.
