Being a parent is hard enough without the added complications. So imagine trying to be a father in prison.
A new Netflix documentary sensitively explores this challenge, profiling a father-daughter dinner-dance that took place in a Washington, D.C. prison in 2019, allowing select inmates to spend some quality time with their young daughters. The film follows four girls – Aubrey, Santana, Raziah and Ja’Ana – over the course of eight years, giving viewers a comprehensive look at not only how they prepared for prom and interacted with their parents, but also how they accompanied them. . in the following years.
Filmmaker Natalie Rae directed the film with Angela Patton, who started the dinner dance and runs Camp Diva Leadership Academy and the nonprofit Girls For A Change, two programs that prepare black girls for adulthood. The video of Patton’s 2012 TEDxWomen talk about the origins of dinner-dancing in Richmond—released the same year—accumulated nearly a million views on the TED Talk website and led to the creation of Daughters.
“Just because a father is in prison doesn’t mean he should be excluded from his daughter’s life,” Patton said in the viral talk.
The directors wanted to raise awareness about how difficult it is for families to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones. Many inmates are not allowed to visit their family members in person and can only speak to them via video chat. They also stated in a statement that they sought to humanize the black men at the center of the story, who do not always receive such treatment in the media or in their lives. An important way to achieve this is to refrain from discussing the crimes that landed the featured parents in prison, allowing the viewer to get to know them regardless of their beliefs.
Daughters demonstrates the tension caused by separation. One of the girls in the film, 15-year-old Raziah, complains that she only has 15 minutes at a time to talk to her father, Alonzo, who is serving a 30-year sentence. The distance created by these limitations is difficult for Raziah. Her mother, Sherita, gets teary-eyed when talking about the two times Raziah talked about ending her life; Once, she found her daughter on the roof of her house, ready to jump, and calmed her down, saying that killing herself wouldn’t help her father, that he was already suffering enough.
Santana, 10, is very vocal about how much her father Mark’s incarceration has affected her. She is seen in a car rehearsing what she wants to say to him when she sees him at the dance. “I’m tired of crying because he wants to keep doing bad things that he shouldn’t do-it’s not okay. It is affecting my.” She adds that she never wants to have children of her own. “You could give me a million dollars and I still wouldn’t be a mother.”
Some of the mothers featured were skeptical about dancing. In the film, Ja’Ana’s mother, Unita, questions whether her daughter’s incarcerated father deserves the opportunity to bond. As she paraphrases a conversation she had with him: “Why would you want to have a relationship with her while you’re incarcerated, if all this time you spent here, you didn’t even want to be bothered with her?”
To attend the dance, participating inmates must complete fatherhood training with an educator, Chad Morris. Over the course of 10 weeks, Morris helps prepare them for what he calls an “emotional rollercoaster,” from the thrill of seeing their daughters — for the first time, in some cases — to the return to reality at the end of the event. . Patton attends one of the sessions to talk about how excited the girls are to meet their parents. When explaining to them the meaning of the event: “It’s about healing our families. It’s about strengthening our families because we know that when our families are intact, our community thrives.”
Parents receive haircuts, suits, shirts, ties and shoes for the big event. Throughout the dance hall, there are craft tables and photo opportunities so parents and daughters can take pictures and take souvenirs to remember them by. But the reunion itself is bittersweet. As fathers and daughters dance to Beyoncé’s “Before I Let Go,” some burst into tears singing along to the lyrics “I would never, ever… Never let you go.” Aubrey, 5, is seen at a table telling her father to come home early, and he says he will get out of prison when she is a teenager.
Studies show that recidivism rates are high. An analysis finds that 82% of individuals released from state prisons are arrested at least once in their first 10 years free. A post-dance swing during a parenting therapy session suggests that programs like this dance could help change that. As one inmate says in the film, “That was the day I truly felt like I couldn’t go back to prison… because of the power I felt that day.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
