• 2 days ago
Captured over two years, "Daddy Don't Go" is a feature length documentary about four disadvantaged fathers in New York C | dG1fTHNBcW9rX2U3eFU
Transcript
00:00Too many fathers are MIA, missing from too many lives and too many homes.
00:11What used to be that this was mostly an African American phenomenon, it is not anymore.
00:17The statistics of men in prison is directly related to fatherless homes.
00:22It is an epidemic.
00:25I told myself, I'm not going to be no deadbeat father, like, for me to be a deadbeat father,
00:32I got to be dead and somebody got to beat me up.
00:35If I got to go to jail, I'll go to jail for my kids.
00:40Any day of the week, I'll go to jail for them.
00:44I fought to get my kids, I fought to get them out, I fought to get them help.
00:49I can't sleep until I know my kids is complicit.
00:53You have a baby, you don't live for yourself anymore, you have to live for your kids.
00:59It would be bad for her to go to foster care because nobody understands me like I was like that.
01:04My hair looks pretty, I want to cut it down.
01:07Use this desk.
01:09The reality is that his fear is well-founded and that he could lose his children in an instant.
01:15I just wish I would have done something differently, not to keep us together for my sake, to keep us together for my son.
01:21He ain't doing what he got to do, I'm doing what I got to do.
01:24For mine and his, until he does something that's my daughter.
01:27Nelson wanted to be a father, not just to Brandon, but to all three children.
01:33What I want is to get some permanent housing, get about this shelter place, just move on with my life.
01:44I think in the end, with him actually being arrested and going away, that saved his life.
01:50You don't want to hire an ex-felon, they don't care if you were 16 years old, they don't care if it was non-violent.
01:55They just look at it like this guy was in prison.
01:58It's real hard out here to get a job.
02:00It does make me feel going back to my old ways, but I choose not to.
02:04It's not just me no more, I have a family.
02:06What should I do with you?
02:08If you don't want to lose your son, then you do what you need to do not to lose him.
02:13Do you understand me?
02:15Yes.
02:17Stop, stop.
02:19I got to make a way for me and my child.
02:21I got to make sure he's taken care of the way he needs to be taken care of.
02:31Milagros is in the mental health facility right now.
02:33I said, everything is going to be alright and we're going to be there every day to see you.
02:39What's with the medicine they're giving you?
02:41Is it better than the ones you've been taking?
02:43It's helping me and the purple pill my mom told you makes me sleep for days.
02:48Makes you sleep for days.
02:51She always tells me, like, Daddy, does this mean that I'm in here?
02:56Does this mean that you're going to stop loving me?
02:58I said, no, I'm never going to stop loving you, you're my baby.
03:13For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov