An enormously moving documentary made all the more effective by co-directors Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s steadfast refusal to settle for easy sentiment in the face of difficult outcomes, “Daughters” has as much ugly-cry potential as any film in recent memory. But the most lasting power of this film about a unique father-daughter dance for D.C.-area Black girls whose fathers are in jail comes in a final act that wipes those tears away to examine the hurt they leave behind.

Like Garrett Bradley’s similarly lilting and delicate “Time” before it, “Daughters” conveys the destructive inhumanity of America’s prison system by pointing our attention toward its collateral victims: in this case, the children denied a meaningful relationship with their dads. “Daughters”…

The number of tears I shed in this film was equal to both sorrow and joy. Joy for some of the smaller child moments of excitement and all-knowing statements like, "I hate weeks" (in regards to time between the thing you're looking forward to). Sorrow obviously for the situation, the US prison system at large (including payment plans to merely talk to fathers and husbands in jail; men who can be moved on the whim to a different state entirely). But what makes this documentary great, beyond the observing camera, are moments of beautiful shots you rarely see in a documentary. And the transcendent goal of the film is empathy and looking at prisoners as human beings only. We never…

"Our daddies are our mirrors that we reflect back on when we decide about what type of man we deserve and how they see us for the rest of our lives."

Addressed with utmost honesty, Rae and Patton's docu relied on the truths and sentiments of rehabilitation and forgiveness bespeaks the serious repercussions of paternal absence on young girls in terms of their ambitions, assurance, identities- and also the void that swallows up the requisite tenderness and belief. At first, akin to the girls' perspective, this reality makes me angry, then upset, and eventually develops into empathy toward the incarcerated fathers- make us feel the confusions, longing, helplessness among the both concerned parties; embraces the continuance of the mothers and…