“Daughters” (2024) Review

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Daughters details the stories behind the Daddy Daughter Dance, a historic event where incarerated fathers are given the chance to spend a day dancing with their daughters. Early in the film, the coordinator warns the dads that this experience is going to be an emotional rollercoaster. They and we know ahead of time that by the time the dance ends, the goodbyes are going to hurt. Even with that warning, I still wasn’t prepared for that moment.

The film follows four daughters and dads going through the pains of separation. It’d be easy for the filmmakers to focus specifically on the fathers as they likely have plenty of insight about longing for the past and being a parent agian. While they do get their voices heard, Natalie Rae gives more time to the young daughters, varying in ages. Aubrey, for example, is a smart five-year-old who is wise with numbers and finds ways to deal with her situation. Her academics and family overlap in her comprehension of math and the realization of how long her father remains locked up. Aubrey’s knowledge paints a picture of hope.

Less hopeful is the ten-year-old Santana. She’s had to grow up fast as the lack of a father, a distant mother, and siblings to take care of. She has few ideas about what the future might look like, but having kids is not on that list. She doesn’t want to replicate the pain for another generation. Even worse is the fifteen-year-old Raziah who has grown so bitter that suicide becomes an option. And then there is the eleven-year-old Ja’Ana who has no memories of her father.

The dance promises to be a magical evening and Rae’s direction does this moving moment justice. It’s staged in a way that embraces the innocence without trying too hard with a sentimental soundtrack. There’s a lightness to how the camera gets close enough, especially when the dressed-up daughters meet their dads in person for the dance. It’s a tenderness scene that is allowed to breathe, where there are embraces both joyous and reluctant. Similar situations transpire at the dance, where there’s sweet moments of cute dancing and telling conversations of blunt honesty. A few scenes present the masterful nature of the event, where the energy is more akin to a family reunion than a dance at the prison.

Then, it hits. The dads and daughters have to say goodbye. They don’t want to. None of them do. All the hesistation are gone. All that exists is a longing for the hugs to never end. It’s hard not to get choked up at this moment. If that weren’t enough to sting your heart, the film continues a year later to showcase the aftermath. The dance turns out to be a crucial moments for the fatherly bond. Some dads get out of prison and continue to get their life together. Some dads remain in prison as their daughters become more distant. Some dads are transferred, making unlikely that they’ll see their daughters for a long time.

It’s the smaller moments that make Daughters such an engrossing documentary. The film doesn’t waste time outlining the court dates and details of the sentences. It’s the dance and the perservation of family and community that takes ownership. We get to watch as the fathers discuss the specifics of the dance while the daughters delight over their dresses. The details of the preparation extend from the dressing of the men to them being led back to their cells in their orange prison uniforms. With the dance as the centerpiece, its importance rings loudly an essential day in lives that have faced darkness with possibly more sadness to follow. The love at the dance can be felt and it’s a love that hurts so bad it’s worth trying to anyway to preserve. It’s why there’s little surprise that the benefits of the dance are outlined by the film’s end.

Daughters is both sweet and raw for its earnest look at families separated by bars and the warmth of that temporary removal of barriers. As one of coordinators notes, when the Daddy Daughter Dance was first proposed, it was highlighted for its originitality and boldness (“No one has ever requested something as powerful as this moment.”). This documentary is of a similar quality, highlighting a core aspect of how prisons erode family and community. As prisons get worse, some have stopped visits all together. Without those visits, the tender moments of this dance won’t happen and these lives will never get better. This film doesn’t shy away from the relationships that are not mended, but it does stress the communal and emotional need for this crucial day of interaction. It’s a dance worth throwing for the lives it will change, if only for six hours.