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Our Father’s Brutal Documentary Avoids Crime Documentary’s Worst Trend
Our Father is the shocking story of a fertility doctor who exploited his patients, but the documentary stays clear of a common true crime problem.

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.

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 been made more palatable than perhaps they should have been. For example, Tiger King focused on creating a gossip-worthy series and making Joe Exotic a meme-able character that would attract casual viewership, rather than shedding new insights on issues surrounding wildlife conservation. Similarly, dramatic adaptations of real stories, like Landscapes, recreate the common true crime problem of making transgressors more sympathetic than necessary.

Some Netflix documentaries have started to focus more on the victims of crimes rather than humanizing the perpetrators. The Tinder Swindler and Athlete A are both recent examples of Netflix handling sensitive subjects in an appropriate way that empowers those who have suffered and gives them the room to tell their stories. Our Father is another documentary that has avoided true crime’s worst trend of turning serious ordeals into entertainment pieces that minimize victims’ voices.