Daughters: A Must-watch, but get your tissues ready

I don’t remember the last time I cried like a baby but this documentary changed that today. I saw people talking about how hard it was to watch Daughters and got curious. I was like people are just too dramatic. Tell you what. I don’t even know how I started crying but my whole face was red when it ended.

Daughters is a 2024 documentary about daddy daughter dance for girls and their incarcerated fathers. One particular agency plans a date with the dads in prison where they get to dress so nice in suit and have a dance with their daughters. The saddest part of this is how most of these dads were even scared to do this dance event because most of them never get the chance to meet their kids and hold their hands due to the no touch visitation policy in prisons.

They had to go through a ten week fatherhood session to learn and unlearn so many things. In fact, others said they signed up just to see their kids again but at the end of the ten weeks, their thoughts were totally reformed. The purpose of this dance with incarcerated dads is to let them know how much their daughters need them. And also help them see how they are missing a lot in their daughters’ lives.

One thing I realized was that no matter how gangster you are in prison, you’ll be a soft person when you see your daughter. Most of these men looked like Angels when they had the dance with their daughters. And what made it so hard to watch was the fact that some of the children were initially angry at their dads but the moment they saw them in prison, none of that anger was nowhere to be found.

The documentary also showed what happened about 5 years after the dance and it was both lovely and heartbreaking. For some, they were out and living a completely better life. According to them, the dance really changed their lives and reminded them they had to do right by their kids. Even those who were normally found getting rearrested after serving their time were now staying out of trouble.

The heartbreaking part was those who received longer sentences after the dance. One particular sentence broke my heart. Keith, father of Aubrey(5 years old as at the dance) thought he was going to be sentenced 7 years but he later got 10 years and Aubrey kind of started being distant. I really understood her behavior because she was now growing and probably going through a lot.

One thing people applaud this documentary for is the fact that they didn’t really talk about the crimes the fathers committed. My opinion on that is a little different. I really was expecting them to add the crimes so that people out there threading that path would see the consequences they are going to face in future.

Watching this documentary opened my eyes to what true rehabilitation can do for a person. And if more of these programs are done for people, they’ll get to reflect a lot on their decisions and choose what is right for them. It’s definitely a 10/10 and no matter who you are, just have a box of tissue by you when you decide to watch this.