Angela Patton knows that Daughters, the documentary she co-directed with Natalie Rae, may elicit a lot of emotions. “I would recommend you have a candle, tissues, water, and that you just breathe,” she says. The film, which casts an unflinching spotlight on how families are impacted by incarceration, is at once sweet, sad, and relentlessly heartrending, but Patton hopes that viewers make it to the end. “Take breaks if you have to, but we do want you to finish it,” she says —“and then I want you to share it with someone else.”
Patton has been working with young people for more than two decades as CEO of Girls for a Change, a nonprofit that empowers Black girls in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia, by addressing their unique needs while making sure to reserve space for innocence and play. “I didn’t see anyone else showing up for Black girls the way that I felt that they deserve,” she says.
One of Patton’s programs, Date with Dad, hosts a father-daughter dance for girls whose fathers are incarcerated, creating a unique opportunity for separated families to experience a moment of togetherness despite the obstacles of the carceral system. When Patton talked about the impact of these events in a viral 2012 TEDWomen talk, filmmaker Rae felt compelled to reach out, hoping to document Patton’s work. Daughters is the culmination of Patton and Rae’s collaboration.
“I had a vision of how powerful I thought the dance was going to be,” Rae says about the event that both fathers and daughters prepare for throughout the film. In the weeks leading up to the dance, the dads meet with fatherhood coach Chad Morris to work through the challenges of showing up for their daughters while behind bars. Many of the men haven’t been able to physically touch their children while they’ve been in prison, which makes the opportunity to finally embrace their daughters overwhelming.
“Having the dance is a pivotal moment for them in their trajectory, but they need support as well,” Morris tells Tudum. “The girls had the support operating with Girls for a Change on the outside, and we stepped in to begin doing that supportive work for [the] dads.”
Part of Morris’ work is explaining to each new cohort of incarcerated fathers that emotionally, the process can be uncomfortable. Morris’ group sessions give participants space to talk about everything from how difficult it is to keep up with their children’s lives while inside, to what it’s like to have a fractured relationship with the mother of their child.
“We can share, and we can talk about our frailties, about the mistakes that we’ve made, our hopes and our aspirations, even our value systems. We challenge our own concept of the value system,” Morris says.
Although both Morris and Patton are intimately involved with the facilitation of the Date with Dad program, they each admit that watching Daughters made them see the effects of their work in a new light.
“Seeing it on film was something entirely different,” Morris says. “It had me choked up, because we don’t realize the scope of what love is. I was able to really see from an onlooker’s point of view, that love — as a verb — being lived out by those dads in those moments, and the love of those girls, even through the challenges.”
For Patton, who does not participate in the fatherhood group chats, viewing them on film was moving. “In the editing room, I literally had to take some breaks because that was heavy for me, to really listen to what these fathers had experienced.”
Though the Date with Dad program is unique, the familial situations and experiences Daughters documents are pervasive. “The film is really a tool for conversations: a tool for reflection, a tool for understanding, and a way to have insight into the fact that we’re all breathing the same air out here,” Morris says. “We’re all in the same communities. And this story, that was told in this one place, is a story that is happening across the country.”
Watch Daughters on Netflix now.
