Our Father’s Brutal Documentary Avoids Crime Documentary’s Worst Trend
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Our Father.
True crime documentaries are more popular than ever and Lucie Jourdan's Our Father avoids the genre's worst trend. Since 2015, Netflix has produced over 200 original documentary feature films covering sports, nature, politics, and true crime. Our Father is the latest addition to Netflix's stacked documentary library and tells the disturbing story of an Indiana fertility doctor who abused his position of power.
Dr. Donald Cline is the subject of Our Father. During the 1970s and '80s, he inseminated his patients without telling them that he was using his own sperm. Years later, Jacoba Ballard used a DNA home test to find that she had seven half-siblings in nearby parts of Indiana and Dr. Cline was their father. Despite best practice, which would normally see a sperm donor's sample used no more than three times, Our Father shockingly reveals that Dr. Cline is the biological father of at least 94 children.
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Our Father avoids the common true crime documentary mistake of neglecting the perspective of the victims. Other documentaries have been criticized for devoting a majority of screen time to understanding the wrong-doers side of the story, including The Ripper, which glamorized serial killers. But Our Father benefits from telling the harrowing story through the eyes of Dr. Cline's biological children because the full consequences of his actions are explained. This avoids the common problem of making the culprit's misdeeds seem justifiable, and worse, that the victims should take some level of responsibility.
Other true crime documentaries have made entertaining audiences their main objective. As a result, the offenders in question have often
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