Have you heard about the latest series ‘Our father’ on Netflix? It is intriguing, isn’t it? I mean one father with too many children. Someone sure tried to take the father of the nation seriously. Although, we have to admit this movie series gives us an insight into a whole lot of new things related to sperm donation and fertility doctors. This is an investigative movie and hence it is based on true events. So we can safely say this movie is very much about real events.
About the movie Production
Before going into the concept and what happened afterwards, let us talk about the people behind the cameras. This chilling investigative film was directed by Lucie Jourdan and produced by Jason Blum. The movie was released on Netflix on 11 May 2022 and has a 16+ certification. This movie comes in the crime and documentary genre.
The movie ‘Our father’ is approximately one hour and 37 minutes long. The introductory trailer talks about how an in-home DNA test revealed several half-siblings to a woman. With this discovery, we go through her journey of discovering a donor sperm scheme and a very cunning fertility doctor.
All the movie is about
‘Our father’ talks about a Jocab Ballard who is a single child and always longed for a brother or a sister. Due to the advancement of technology and social media reach, there are several sites where one can register and look for their extended family. So when Joab registered and found out more than 50 people were her step sibling. She has no words.
As the word got around and then what she found out was even more chilling than she anticipated. Each one of these children’s fathers has sought the services of a certain Dr Cline. And the telling signs were their blue eyes and blond hair which each of these step siblings had in common.
What happened to a certain Dr. Cline
So what happened is that DR. cline, not only tricked the people who wanted an anonymous donor but also the couples who provided him with the sample. Keep in mind that this is something which happened around the 70s and 80s in the town of Indiana. Well during those times Indiana was not a state and there was no federal law in place to criminalize cline’s action.
Around 1979, Dr cline established his fertility clinic in Indiana and used his sperm secretly for artificial insemination on people who came to visit him. He even claimed that these sperms were of his medical students. But that is not all, for the couples who provided the samples, he changed the sperm to his own in those cases also.
About the step siblings and Ancestry
In the documentary, we can find Jacob Ballard talking about her experience when she found out about this hideous act of Dr.cline. Along with Jacob, we can also hear from other step-siblings of Jacob and how an in-home DNA test kit helped them realize how they all are related.In one of the interviews, one child of the cline claimed that “When I opened up Ancestry, I had over 3,000 hits” which in itself was shocking and a hard pill to swallow. Some of the couples admitted it was hard to learn and even harder to tell their partner that their child is not their DNA child.
Law and Regulation
Cline retired from practice in 2009. As per Netflix, in 2019 cline was convicted on two felony counts which were obstructing the investigation and lying to investigators about using his sperm. In 2018, cline had to surrender his license to the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana which also prohibited him from ever applying for reinstatement.
As there was no law against using one’s sperm and cheating the patients, Dr Cline was never convicted for doing this injustice to all his patients. Hence in 2019, Indiana was the first state to pass legislation making it a criminal offense for fertility doctors to use their sperm without their patient’s consent.
The passing of this law was a team effort and demanded a lot of dedication, persistence and sacrifices. This was said by one of the cline’s children who also played a major part in getting the bill passed. Hence from now on, Every person who visits a fertility center is protected and if such a case ever happens then all those who suffer will be protected.
Our Father : Review and Critics
Back to Netflix, Our father has received 6.8/10 on IMDb and is liked by 98% of Google users. As per the movie critic Robert Daniels who wrote for rogerebert.com gave one star and commented on the movie as “a frustrating, tawdry documentary, rips a headline for trashy dramatic beats”. But then Sarah Milner, a reviewer for SlashFilm wrote this comment about the movie “The movie does not retell sordid details for cheap thrills, nor does it glamorize the doctor as an infamous figure”. So as you can see from the reviews, this movie has received mixed reviews.
So on to the question of whether to watch this movie or not? Well, this depends upon you. If you like a detective or investigative kind of movie, we will say go watch Our father this weekend.
Interested in movie making or learning how to make a movie, here is an interesting piece with Anuroop Valsalan, the person behind the movie “Aathmana” on storiyaan.