In search of answers, a 13-year-old son trying to deal with his dad choosing a new family over him, sat in the back row of Moss Performing Arts Center Recital Hall with his mom to watch Justin Hunt’s documentary film “Absent.”
The topic of the movie: deficient and detached fathers. The mood was neither joyous nor sad. The room was filled with a sense of anticipation. Hunt, a CMU graduate, prefaced the film by warning the audience of two “bad” words in the film to which he had no control.
The audience watched the screen with their full attention. Real life people explained the direction their lives have taken, simply because they grew up without their fathers. The range of people featured in the documentary were prostitutes, inner city high school kids, world champion boxer Johnny Tapia and the lead singer of Metallica James Hetfield. According to Hunt’s website, his interview with Hetfield has been called the “greatest Hetfield interview ever captured on film.”
Hunt’s film had a lot to teach. Not all disengaged or absent fathers are results of divorce. The film showed how even in times of war the men left to fight and either didn’t return or did return but were disconnected to their children and families. There are also the fathers who felt that being the provider was their only role, which left kids without fatherly interaction.
The common theme of each person who had an absent father was they all sought love, respect and affirmation that they were worthy. Each had made vows that they would not treat their children as they were treated. All tried to make sense of what they had done to be neglected, misplaced and abandoned.
Absent fathers is a universal subject with no discrimination between races, social class, male or female and a global topic. The film presented what is called the “father wound.”
“You show me a person that is angry, violent, depressed, selfish, sexually immoral, hyper-driven, or one of several other personality types, and I’ll show you a father wound. Nothing is more important to a young man, or a young woman, than a father’s love, respect and acceptance. And nothing is more damaging than when the question ‘Am I good enough?’ is asked of the father by the child, and the answer is silence,” Hunt wrote.
At the end of the film Hunt left time for comments and questions.
One audience member asked what to do for a child who had recently lost her father due to death.
“You now have the knowledge of what kids without their fathers need, and other males in the family will step up and help bridge the gap,” Hunt said.
The mother of the teenage son in the back row asked Hunt how to help her son deal with the rejection and fault he felt of being replaced by his father’s new family. Her son wanted to buy the DVD to show it to his dad.
“Sometimes hearing it from someone else helps,” Hunt said. “It is not your fault.”

gschille@mavs.coloradomesa.edu