Festival Favourite Daughters Is Acquired by Netflix @Sundance 2024

The impact of the Sundance Film Festival has revitalized the festival itself and set a positive tone for the film industry. Especially after a challenging year of strikes, Sundance took decisive action and never turned back. The documentary Daughters relates to the struggles and challenges faced by Sundance and the industry. The eight-year project, directed by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, won the Audience Award in the Documentary Competition and was named the overall festival favourite during Sundance. The deal is expected to close at around seven figures.

Angela Patton is the CEO of Girls for A Change whose mission is to find and further opportunities for young black girls. She also created the Date with Dad programme on which the film is based on. The programme brings incarcerated fathers back with their daughters without any physical barriers at a correctional institute. It has the fathers dressing up semi-formally to spend a small window of time bonding with their daughters. Furthermore, the fathers are trained in fatherhood training and mentorship before the dance.

“Daughters” was shot in the first year the dance was held in Washington, D.C and centers on four girls — Aubrey Smith, 5, Santana Stewart, 10, Ja’Ana Crudup, 11, and Raziah Lewis, 15 — as they prepared for the event.

This is a documentary that has intentions of bringing change to the criminal justice system in America. Producer Kerry Washington has been known to do political work.

“People always ask me why I’m drawn to political work,” said Washington about boarding the project. “I’m not drawn to political work. It’s just I am a woman and I am a Black person. In this body, when I center stories about me or stories that star people who look like me, it’s considered political because the world wants to push us out into the margins and we all deserve to be at the center of our lives.”

“After eight years and such a long intense journey together, it means more than anything that bringing this to audiences they’d have such a strong reaction,” a tearful Rae said as she and Patton accepted their prizes during Sundance’s awards ceremony last week. “And that the experience and pain and wisdom and everything that these families shared with us is resonating. It is so meaningful.”

A similarly emotional Patton shared a call to action.

“[This film] is about activism and awareness, so just don’t give us applause. If you saw ‘Daughters’ then you know you must do something,” Patton said. “Please vote for change in our criminal justice system and understand that this system is impacting our families in a way that we can see clearly through this film, and create the change that we know that our families need – and that we need — to really get to victory and to be unified.”

FERNTV says to bring a box of tissues to the theatre or your living room because you are going to need it.

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