In a fluorescent-lit corridor of a Washington DC jail, a group of men nervously await the arrival of their daughters for a special dance. The fathers, dressed in suits and ties, haven’t seen their children in months, some in years, due to incarceration.

After a few beats, the girls finally arrive, nervous in their own right. They wave shyly at their fathers, walking arm in arm with each other for comfort, before breaking away for hugs and kisses.

“Daddy,” yells one girl as she sprints into her father’s arms. Tears form in his eyes.

Daughters, which debuted on Netflix last week, is a striking film, a crafted exploration of how incarceration affects families, how children navigate ambiguous grief, and the cruelty embedded in the modern-day prison system.

The documentary, co-directed by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, follows four girls and their fathers as they prepare for a father-daughter dance inside a correctional facility. Patton, an activist focused on empowering girls of color, founded the dance as a way to help daughters stay connected with their incarcerated fathers. “These girls just needed a way to invite their fathers into their lives on their own terms,” she says in one scene.

As the girls and their mothers await the dance on the outside, fathers within the jail attend a 10-week preparatory course – part group counseling, part bonding – led by a life coach. In a large sunny room, the men, dressed in orange jumpsuits, sit in a circle, listening and sharing about fatherhood over paper cups of coffee. Some are more withdrawn than others, but a camaraderie quickly develops among the group, particularly as the dance inches closer.

Across a tight 108 minutes, Daughters is painstakingly intimate, using closeups, still images of nature and spliced home videos to capture the litany of feelings around the celebratory dance and the years that follow. Tailored, ethereal music by Kelsey Lu runs through the film’s emotional mosaic.

As US jails have increasingly shifted to virtual visitation over the past few years, the dance is a rare opportunity for in-person contact, heightening the emotional stakes for families who have not held each other in years. The four girls – Aubrey, 5; Santana, 10; Ja’Ana, 11; and Raziah, 15 – have all made sense of their absent fathers in their own ways.

Aubrey is intelligent and bright. The walls of her room are filled with certificates and ribbons. But she struggles to understand her father’s lengthy jail sentence of seven years. “Seven is a very close number to one, but it’s going to take a long time because it’s in years,” she says.

Despite being only five years older, Santana is much more weathered than Aubrey. When the audience first meets her, Santana promises to “not shed one single tear” if her father returns to jail upon his release. “Done shedding tears because he wanna keep doing bad stuff that he shouldn’t be doing,” she says, promising to never become a mother. “My dad is not around so I’m the dad.”

Ja’Ana is the most nervous of the bunch. She hasn’t seen her father in several years and remains unsure of what their reunion will bring. “I don’t even remember his face,” she says. “I don’t remember nothing about my father.”

Raziah remains shattered by her father’s absence. “I miss him being here,” she says through thick tears. The teenager, according to her mother, has openly spoken about suicide multiple times.

Daughters show a complex range of emotions, a common thread of pain among all the girls, all of whom are at critical developmental points. The girls’ feelings are complicated and overwhelming, and the documentary renders a realistic portrayal of children who simply want their fathers home. It pushes audiences to contend with the question: who is being punished when we send fathers away and force families apart?

Inside the jail, the men reach epiphanies of their own about how cycles of incarceration have affected their families. Several of the fathers grew up with incarcerated parents. Some had their daughters young, and spoke about a lack of support in parenthood. Scenes of kinship emphasize the humanity at the center of Daughters, and how US jails and prisons often fail to address the mental and emotional needs of the incarcerated.

Beyond showcasing excitement at reunification or realizations among the fathers, Daughters holds room for resentment and anger from the mothers who are left behind. With the fathers gone, caretaking almost entirely falls on Black women and girls, many of whom are highlighted in the documentary, if only in fleeting moments.

In one scene, Unita, Ja’Ana’s mom, has thrown the 11-year-old a birthday party. Unita shares her irritation with attempts by Ja’Ana’s father to connect: “Why do you wanna bond with her while you’re incarcerated, when all this time you had out here and you didn’t even really wanna be bothered with her?”

Frustration is an underrated note within the film, one that carries equal weight as despair. It’s a difficult balance to strike among the film’s various subjects, one that the filmmakers don’t entirely fumble but also don’t completely strike.

The actual daddy-daughter dance is a difficult, yet necessary watch. Reunions between the daughters and fathers produce tears from both sides, as everyone attempts to savor the evening.

The girls, dressed in a flurry of sparkly dresses, dance, exchange keepsakes and receive flowers from their dads – a “promise” of their love for each other.

To the tune of Beyoncé’s rendition of Before I Let Go, one daughter sobs as she sings: “I will never, ever, ever let you go.”

In a devastating inevitability, fathers and daughters are separated again. Only two of the four girls actually get to see their fathers released. For the other two girls, the dance, in all its power, is a bittersweet blip in a cruel sentence.