Daughters: A Deeply Emotional and Compassionate Documentary
Directed by Sari Rae and Julia Patton, Daughters is a very disturbing and eloquent film which deals with the relationship of fathers and daughters as seen from the lens of the criminal justice system. Having said that, the film considerably represents the lives of young girls and the way in which they interact with their fathers, who are in jail, highlighting the effects of incarceration on families. They are able to present the issues based on fact, yet in Daughters we rarely notice such distasteful things as ‘bulk of emotion’ offered for exploitation.
Daughters’s most aggressive strategy is its infiltration into the emotional proximity of the viewers. In an interview with the producers of the film Daughters, Patton and Rae share that they had the opportunity to work with these families for quite a number of years and this reflects on the film. While Daughters does not gloss over such issues as race, crime, and injustice, the most poignant portions include the more tender, mundane exchanges between fathers and children- when there is love, desperation, and hope all at once. It is extremely rewarding, but at the same time very shocking. Some of those things are so emotionally powerful that they make it very difficult to watch with a dry eye.
It is perhaps the most striking feature of Daughters which makes it particularly commendable. The film does not just look at these men and their daughters as the ‘offenders’ or ‘victims’, rather throws light on the plight of these politically, socially and economically oppressed people by re-evaluating their emotional universe. This, however, is not about the policies or group statistics, contrary, this is about the ‘collateral’ damage that parents do to their children, families to relationships, and individual sacrifices to mental health when incarcerated.
Some other readers may want to argue that the form of the film at some periods of the time appears to be a little scrappy but the quality of the shortish stories compensates for that. The way the filmmakers have put themselves into the cause and the delicateness that goes into telling that story makes this one of the most powerful films you will ever watch.
Daughters is a film that alternates between heartbreak and hope, showing a rare empathetic view of family, love, and strength in difficult times. Words are insufficient for the scope of the content of this documentary film; it needs a loud careful voice.