Directors Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, Executive Producer Kerry Washington and subjects Aubrey Smith, Mark Grimes and Advocate Chad Morris stop by The Hollywood Reporter's studio during the Sundance film festival to talk about their documentary 'Daughters,' about four young girls who prepare for a special daddy-daughter dance with their incarcerated fathers. Patton and Rae discuss the "de-humanizing" experience for young girls who want to visit their fathers in jail and the impact this documentary had on families.
00:00It's so clear that fathers need their daughters and that daughters need their fathers and that we need to be able to be in community and not stuck behind plexiglass or monitors and, you know, electronic devices.
00:14And we need to be in community. The fact that you can't touch your child is just, it's inhumane.
00:23I was asked to do a TED Talk about the father-daughter dance in the jail.
00:27I had many filmmakers reach out to me after the TED Talk and said they thought that this would be a great, you know, story to tell to the world.
00:36I did as well, but I had other storytellers.
00:41Sometimes the local news, a journalist would come in and I wasn't always satisfied with the story because they would leave out one key point and that was the girls.
00:53The girls who actually came up with an idea to connect with their fathers on their own terms.
01:00And so when Natalie reached out to me, she got it.
01:04She understood that the girls need to be at the forefront and also invited me to be a co-director because she understood their representation mattered.
01:13She understood that I knew the families and so together we were able to bring our strengths, our talents, our community has also been supportive of making this into the doc that we have today.
01:26So it happened organically, but throughout the process, we also broke down the boundaries of a typical doc together.
01:34When I saw Angela's TED Talk, it just was such a powerful story and I've worked a lot in the women's space and it was just one of the most powerful examples of what could happen when we listen to young women's ideas.
01:46And so, yeah, we met, we really saw very similar.
01:49We've got similar tastes in music and visuals and all this kind of thing.
01:52So we just like love the same stuff.
01:54And we're also like knew the power of the music and the dance and the touch and these elements that we really wanted to bring out as threads in the film.
02:01And, you know, each year the film needs something different.
02:04Honestly, we thought it might only take two or three years, but we actually took three years to get a dance filmed because a program went on hold.
02:12Things happen.
02:13So then we finally got a dance filmed in 2019.
02:16Then there's a pandemic.
02:17There's all these other obstacles, funding.
02:19So we just always have each other's backs and I think can wear many hats together.
02:23So it's been great, great collaboration.
02:26What was your favorite part about the process of being in the documentary?
02:30It'll probably be the father-daughter it is because like that's the time I got to see my dad the most.
02:35And we had like lots of fun.
02:38That's probably like the best memory I've had like in my whole life.
02:41Learning more and more as the film went on, I think even before COVID, hundreds of facilities were stopping in-person visitation rooms
02:49and even stopping the visits on either side of a glass wall and replacing that with like video apps, video visits,
02:57or, you know, letting tech companies come in and actually charge families.
03:02It could be like $7 a text message, $15 for a video visit.
03:06So the prices are insane and then they make this experience so dehumanizing and end up, you know, causing more damage.
03:16And, you know, a lot of the girls that we've spoken to have just said, you know, they don't even want to do these visits and stuff like that.
03:22So it's really important for people to see what it's doing on that side and understand the cost both financially and just what it does to people's lives.
03:32I went to this very elite, fancy private school for high school.
03:37And at our school, we had a father-daughter dance.
03:40And I always saw that as something that more privileged communities do.
03:44And I never unpacked why that is.
03:47Like, why would that be?
03:48And so to hear about this like really special tradition that's so important in the maintenance of a bond between a father and daughter
03:56being taken into a space where people are so dehumanized,
04:00I thought this is a really powerful idea.
04:03And I immediately wanted to watch it and learn more about it.
04:06What was it like watching the footage of the documentary and seeing it all together?
04:12What's what is that like?
04:13It's a sea of, you know, the part throughout the documentary where we sitting down because, you know, we was incarcerated at the time.
04:23So we had our suits and ties on and we was all lined up and our daughters came from like down the hallway, like in a line.
04:34Just like to see that from the outside looking there, you know, it was just, you know, like I said, it was life changing.
04:40And then fast forward to, you know, when we had to let reality really kick in when our daughters had to leave us, you know,
04:50and, you know, people cried, daughters cried, you know, that some daughters didn't understand, you know,
04:56like why are he not coming with us?
04:58You know, they didn't really understand.
05:00If our messes get out there, I think that it'll change a lot of people's lives, you know,
05:04because even if you're not a parent, you're still somebody's child.
05:07Well, I just want to shout out these two over here because, you know, you guys are community organizers.
05:14You transform.
05:15You're in the community every day in Richmond, Virginia.
05:17You have been for years before the film, after the film.
05:21And I think part of what we want people to understand is that you, when you watch the movie,
05:25if you want there to be change, you don't actually have to reinvent the wheel.
05:29There are people dedicated to transforming communities and making the world a better place.
05:33And they are doing this heavy lifting every single day.
05:35Those who watch the film who don't participate in conversations or read press or hear from Angela won't know
05:41that it really started with the power of voice.
05:44And for our youth voice, our daughters in particular, but also for me as an advocate for fathers being accountable,
05:53putting them in a position to have conversations among themselves,
05:56and then being challenged enough to find a plate to step up to, not only to advocate and be present for your child as best you can,
06:05but be willing to take the charge of carrying the shield of, hey, I was transparent in this space,
06:11and you can see a glimpse into my life, because the men that are behind the wall don't have advocates.
06:18They're classified by number, or they're classified by statistic, or they're classified by public opinion about what it is they've done,
06:25classified by crime, classified by conviction.
06:29But their voice being heard brings it back to the human story.
06:32This story is being driven by real people and real lives, and the work that we do particularly is about that.
06:37So I'm really hopeful that the conversations continue.
06:40You know, when we tell this story, this happened because a young girl had an idea,
06:44and these girls wrote a letter to their sheriff.
06:47And in a lot of communities, you vote for your sheriff.
06:50People don't talk about all the down-ballot elections that happen, you know, judges, sheriffs, school boards.
06:57But you have to show up not just to vote for the big elections, the governors, the presidents, the senators.
07:02Those are important.
07:03But also, that sheriff had the open heart to say, let's try to make this work.
07:08Let's see if we can make this work.
07:09I don't know how it's going to work, but this sounds like a great idea.
07:12We have to elect people in positions of power that are willing to be led by their community,
07:18that know that their salaries are paid by our tax dollars, that we don't work for them, they work for us.
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