No Pictures With My Father (2025) Documentary Review: A personal essay that recounts estrangement and reconnection with surface-level precision

Some families have a strange relationship with one another. They all live under the same roof, but they are never truly the same person – despite how hard the parents wish for their children to be like them. The crux of “No Pictures With My Father” does not lie in this phenomenon, but it is important to point out that the differences between families eventually lead to disappointment and resentment, creating ego and pride within the folds.

Reginald M. Jernigan Jr., who serves as a single-person crew here, presents a personal essay where he reconnects with his father, realizing that he has no pictures with him. The documentary moves with only one singular vision – sitting down with his estranged father, trying to understand what really went wrong with their lives and why they have been away from each other, not addressing or trying to understand why they did what they did to each other. The conversation that Reginald has with his father presents unprecedented vulnerability in the filmmaker. He is not afraid of crying on screen, or questioning his father about his absence, or the reason for his being the way he was.

A still from No Pictures with My Father (2025).

There’s not much else to the film, which is why it is difficult for me to even call it a film. The idea of investigating and sitting down with one’s estranged father allows this ‘video essay’ to feel emotionally moving and personal, but beyond the initial plot setup – Reginald M. Jernigan Jr.’s introduction for why he wants to make this film, and the scattershot way in which he co-joins some other interviews where people who have no pictures with their father speak up, there’s nothing much of value here.

The 1-hour 18-minute-long essay mostly talks about the estrangement due to ego and pride, but it refuses to dig deeper. While it is very important for some of us to revisit our demons, our traumas, and share them with others who would be suffering in the same way, a more structured narrative, a more sincere sit-down would have made “ No Pictures With My Father” more memorable. In its present form, it feels like a short doc stretched out to feature length just for the sake of it.