Dad La Soul - Maybe I’m Just Like My Father Film.

Aim

Fatherhood can be brilliant and brutal. One British dad. Four US cities. One film asks who reaches fathers first. Before crisis does.

**URGENT UPDATE:

This film started with a question and a £24,000 mountain to climb.

Then our very own fairy godfather and godmother stepped in and agreed to privately invest 50% of the budget, driven by one belief: these stories matter.

Now we need your help to finish the job.

Help us tell the stories of people reaching dads before crisis does. Please donate today.

READ ON BELOW:

PROJECT OVERVIEW.

Everyone says they want men to talk. Fewer people ask why so many distrust the places built to help them.

Maybe I’m Just Like My Father follows one British dad across four US cities. I want to understand what happens when fatherhood, culture and activism collide.

If trusted communities don't reach men early, somebody else will. Hate-filled algorithms already offer lost men certainty, blame and belonging.

So what makes dads trust a room before silence becomes crisis? And is this where the dadsosphere starts fighting back against the manosphere?

INTRODUCTION.

In the UK, around 70 babies are born every hour. Every week, more than 84 men take their own lives. One in three dads feels lonely, yet only a quarter are asked about their mental health.

Those are horrifying statistics, aren't they?. 

But nobody ever loses a statistic. 

They lose their mate, brother, partner, son or dad. Another community gets left with a gaping hole, wondering why nobody saw the signs.

Meanwhile, hate-fuelled algorithms reach lost men and boys quickly. They offer certainty, blame and belonging, but poison lies underneath.

If we do nothing, the silence continues. More suicides and more generations of boys looking at the harmful and poisonous types of examples of what a"real man" looks like. 

We’re not having that anymore. This isn't a "man" problem. This is an everyone problem. 

1. The film

The result will be a 60-minute documentary that shows what happens when culture and activism collide, and how fatherhood speaks through different cultures, languages, traditions, peer support, policy and technology. I want to see how they reach men that mainstream services miss.

This is not a new subject for us, as you can see in this ITV News report here.

Can we become the men we needed when we were boys?

2. Why this film, why now

Fatherhood is never only personal. It is inherited, learned, copied, resisted and rebuilt. Your dad enters the room with you, and so does his dad. The jokes, silence, loyalty, damage and tenderness come too.

Fatherhood can be brilliant and brutal, sometimes before breakfast.

Does it matter which country you live in? 

The systems change, but fathers everywhere inherit something: the colour of your skin, what god you pray to, who you decide to fall in love with. I will meet people using culture, education, community and policy to change how fatherhood works.

This will not be a parade of experts sitting beneath tastefully arranged bookshelves. 

It will move from Washington policy rooms to Bronx communities, Chicago organisers and Atlanta hip-hop educators. 

There is also a wider risk. 

Valuable knowledge remains trapped inside separate organisations, communities and professional networks. People keep reinventing the same work. Services keep repeating approaches that many men do not trust.

Meanwhile, new generations continue discovering the depth of somebody’s struggle after everything has already fallen apart.

That is a brutal way of putting it. It is also why this cannot become another awareness film.

A film cannot prevent suicide by itself. 

But it can show what trusted, earlier intervention actually looks and feels like. It can capture the hesitation before somebody speaks. It can show the humour, discomfort and silence that disappear from professional reports.

With Dad La Soul, I built what I couldn’t find when I needed it. Since 2017, we have connected more than 12,000 families. 

Watch the video below and see the impact we are having.

Our dads are aged 16 to 75. Single, married, divorced, co-parenting and everything in between. We build better doors into places men already want to enter. That might mean Lego, comedy, football, music or a sea swim.

And somewhere between coffee and nonsense, strangers start becoming a community.

I am an expert at bringing very different men together, galvanising them, turning a room full of strangers into a community, and taking that conversation from local playdates into rooms shaping policy, culture, and care.

My job is making sure the world finally listens to what is happening in those rooms.

But we cannot do this without you. Without your support.

Here’s what happens when Dad La Soul thrives>. 

3. The journey and its supporters

The project already has credible support across Britain and America:

• The American Institute for Boys and Men.
• Professor Anna Tarrant, Professor of Sociology at the University of Lincoln and founder and director of CIFFR.
• Mark Brooks OBE, Director of the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys.
• Brian Anderson, American fatherhood advocate and co-founder of Fathering Together.
• Dr J. L. Adolph, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, Perimeter College, and founder of DadCypher Edutainment.
• Equimundo and the Global Boyhood Initiative.
• The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fatherhood.
• Bloomsbury Publishing, through our work around Letters to Our Sons with actor Stephen Graham and psychologist Orly Klein. 

4. Director’s vision and production

I want to understand where culture, activism, education, community trust and public systems meet. I want to see how growth, policy and systems can strengthen trust or quietly kill it. I want to understand how fathers enter the story earlier. 

I also want to know what helps trusted social programmes take root, grow and last.

Darza Productions is the film’s production partner. Their award-winning work centres on community-driven film storytelling. 

5. What your money will make possible

Why the funding matters now.

This opportunity will not come around twice. The Fellowship gives me access to people, places and conversations during two specific journeys.

A film might not stop somebody from taking their own life. 

But it might show them that, whatever they are struggling with, they are not alone; that a ready-made community is there to back them, not just another bloody leaflet; and it can help communities understand how to reach people before they reach that point.

A report can describe those differences. A film can let people feel them. 

The finished film can reach fathers, families, teachers, practitioners, commissioners and community leaders. Screenings can bring those people together. 

They can then examine what could work locally, turning the learning into practical guidance. The film gives that learning human faces, voices and consequences.

The aim is to help build more places where somebody asks, listens and notices. 

That includes educators, health professionals, employers, organisers, funders and policymakers. They control many of the doors men are being asked to enter.

Success is not returning with clever quotations and jet lag. 

It is turning what people share into something useful. Their context and ownership still need protecting.

What your support unlocks.

£15,000. We get the film properly underway.

We secure professional filming, production management, contributor care and core post-production.

£17,500. We capture more of the journey.

We fund additional filming, archive material, transcripts and stronger post-production.

£20,000. We help the film travel.

We strengthen accessibility, community-screening resources, publicity and carefully chosen festival submissions.

£24,000. We complete the full production.

We deliver the professional 40-to-60-minute film, podcast, trailer, supporter preview and promised rewards.

Anything above £24,000 goes directly into building a movement for change; the costs of keeping the lights on have skyrocketed, and traditional funding has slowed to a drip.

This isn’t just about losing events. It’s about losing lives. We want to give the story more room to capture voices, places and moments we might otherwise miss.

Reaching the full target also helps the film find an audience. It puts the film in front of fathers, families, practitioners, and communities who can use it.

Why this budget works

This is not a Hollywood budget. It is a tight, realistic budget for making one important film properly and ethically. Many of the creatives involved are dads and are self-employed. We know it’s tough out there. We don’t expect them to work for peanuts.

If we fall short, the Fellowship journey still happens. However, we cannot deliver the professional production described here.

Delivery timetable

September 2026: Production planning, contributor agreements and filming preparation

October 2026: First filming phase in New York and Washington, D.C.

November 2026 to February 2027: Footage review, early editing, UK testing and second-phase planning

March 2027: Second filming phase in Chicago and Atlanta

April to May 2027: Final edit, podcast production, sound, colour, graphics, captions and contributor checks. 

June 2027: Finished film, completed podcast and supporter preview.

July onwards: Festival submissions, publicity and community-screening programme.

THIS FILM CAN HAVE YOUR NAME ON IT

That is the bit I really love. This is not just about funding another film. It is about making something that lasts: your child’s name, your business, or someone you have lost, perhaps way too soon. 

Something that carries the name of someone who matters to you.

If you can donate, choose the level that works for you. If money is tight, sharing the campaign still matters.

Thank you for listening. 

Lots of love - Dan & The Dad La Soulies.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 9th November 2026 at 5:00pm