Angela Patton is an activist. She’s the founder of the nonprofit Camp Diva Leadership Academy and the CEO of Girls For A Change. Their mission is to prepare Black girls for the world and the world for Black girls.
Patton gave a TEDx Women talk in 2012 about the importance of nurturing the relationship between daughters and their incarcerated fathers. In the talk, which went viral, Patton says because a father is locked in does not mean he should be locked out of his daughter’s life. Inside the prison, the men participated in weeks of counseling and preparation for the culminating event, a father-daughter dance within a Richmond prison. It drew massive attention to Patton’s nonprofit and led to this documentary.
In 2022, ten years after the Ted Talk, Patton partnered with Natalie Rae to co-write and co-direct “Daughters,” a documentary about the event and the prison program that allowed it to happen. “Daughters” earned the U.S. Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
This was a long-haul project not only because of Covid and all the obstacles in their path to obtain permission to do much of the filming inside a prison, but also because they followed the main subjects of the film over an eight-year period. The dance takes place in a Washington D.C. prison in 2019. The film documents the preparation for the dance, the dance and the on-going relationships of the fathers and daughters following the event.
The four daughters--Aubrey, Santana, Raziah, and Ja’Ana--are different ages and thus have different life experiences regarding their relationships with their father and the hopes, disappointments, and distance they encounter.
The doc raises awareness about the difficulties families face, staying in touch with the incarcerated fathers. It highlights that increased exposure to family members reduces the rate of recidivism. In the dozen years the program has been in place, participants have a 95% success rate of not returning to prison.
“Daughters” is rated PG-13 and runs 1 hour and 48 joyful and tearful minutes. It’s currently streaming on Netflix. Don’t sit down to watch this doc without a box of tissues within reach.