In a correctional facility in Washington DC, a group of fathers are dressed in smart suits. They shuffle on the plastic chairs, fussing with their ties and craning their necks in anticipation. Eventually, a door swings open, and a parade of young girls in prom dresses begin to make their way down the hallway. For one day only, their incarcerated fathers have been permitted to change out of their jumpsuits.
“It gets you when they walk down the hallway,” says Angela Patton, the co-director of Daughters, a striking new documentary that follows four daughters and their incarcerated fathers as they prepare for a daddy-daughter dance. It got me, too, seeing the girls walk down that jail corridor, eyes searching frantically for their dads. Some of them hadn’t hugged their fathers in years.
