Give Me Back My Daughter Review and Ending Explained

Lifetime’s ‘Give Me Back My Daughter‘ tells the story of Renee Jackson, a single mother whose life is upended when she loses custody of her daughter, Imani, to Child Protective Services. The story centers on the mother and daughter duo as they struggle with homelessness and unemployment while trying to find a way out of their financial hole. When Renee is offered an interview at a prestigious real estate firm, she is excited by the prospect of landing a big break. However, her life is turned completely upside down when her decision to leave Imani in the car for the interview’s duration leads to the police putting her under arrest and separating her from her child. Subsequently, the mother must find a way to rebuild her life with help from people around her as she awaits a grand reunion with her daughter. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Review: A Heartfelt Drama About a Mother’s Resolve to Change For the Better

‘Give Me Back My Daughter’ is a straightforward narrative that mainly focuses on character growth and emotional payoff. Its simple structure lends to a focused story where the execution is more important than the complexity of the subject matter explored. To that end, the movie performs commendably in illustrating its central themes of parental love, single motherhood, and rising above adversity, often touching upon some genuinely authentic moments of individuals realizing their own strength. The main heartbeat of the narrative is the relationship between Renee and her daughter, Imani, which becomes strained as the narrative progresses. However, this adds a layer of tension that allows the main character to find a way to reinvent herself before she loses her child forever.

While the film concentrates on Renee’s monumental task of reuniting with her daughter, it raises numerous ethical questions that add more weight to the main conflict. It also compels the audience to think about the latitude afforded to people like Renee, who struggle to care for their children despite facing massive trouble on all fronts. The thought-provoking ideas at the forefront of the story include the dichotomy between individual responsibility and state policy, the lack of support networks, and a catch-22 situation where those trapped within the system have no way to climb out on their own. It paints a tragic but realistic picture of contemporary society and everyone’s role within it. However, the story’s core revolves around a positive message – to learn to trust one another and work as a group – which is one worth singing about.

Give Me Back My Daughter Plot Synopsis

The movie opens with a jarring scene where we are introduced to Renee being arrested by cops while she shouts desperately for Imani. We shift six months back when mother and daughter wake up and prepare for a long day ahead. Renee drops her daughter off at her elementary school while heading to work. Although she is excited by the prospect of applying for a management position at the company, her dreams are dashed when her higher-up informs her that she has been let go as part of a company-wide downsizing initiative. Suddenly jobless, Renee’s life quickly goes off track as her financial needs ramp up, especially with the demands of her daughter’s schooling and caretaking as an integral part of the equation.

After being rejected from countless job interviews, Renee faces the prospect of eviction as she can no longer pay her rent. Seeing her extenuating circumstances, her landlord cuts her some slack for a while. However, the walls finally close in, and Renee has to tell her daughter that they must move out. Unfortunately, with no place lined up, Renee and Imani become homeless and start sleeping in their car during the night. The protagonist seeks help from the bank but only faces more complications and has no way out. Meanwhile, Imani’s friends at school start ostracizing her because of the family’s poverty. Renee finally lands a big break when she is contacted by a real estate firm for a position she applied for at the company.

On the day of the interview, the babysitter, who is meant to look after Imani, ghosts the mother-daughter duo, leaving Renee with very few options. Desperate to land the job, she asks her daughter to stay in the car while she goes upstairs for her assessment. Although she is accepted immediately, Renee’s jubilation is short-lived because, by the time she comes back down to break the news to her daughter, Imani is taken in by Child Protective Services. Subsequently, Renee must prove her worth as a responsible parent at a court hearing, or else risk losing her daughter permanently to the foster system. As such, the single mom tries to reinvent her life, making amends for her shortcomings while discovering the resolve needed to be a good mother.

Give Me Back My Daughter Ending: What is the Judge’s Verdict? Does Imani Come Back to Renee?

Although her first court hearing goes poorly, Renee manages to turn it around the second time. At the end of the film, the single mother gets her opportunity to reunite with her daughter by convincing the judge that she has made massive changes to her life, which makes her capable of being a reliable and stable mother. As she takes her stand, she explains that she is financially secure owing to her two jobs at Jeff’s Diner and Tiana’s hair salon, both of whom help her find her inner purpose once more. Additionally, she also has a new home courtesy of Jeff pulling some strings and landing her a good and fair deal that is affordable. She states that she is also able to cover her rent sustainably without putting any stress on her finances. In many ways, she is in a better spot than she has been for a long time.

Earlier in the story, Renee was a desperate mother clinging to hope rather than belief. It all stemmed from her losing her job in the film’s opening, an event she never recovered from fully until she took stock of her situation objectively. In fact, what began as an innocuous firing one morning led to her slowly but surely losing everything in her life – her house, her life, and her daughter. As such, the woman was left with a huge hole in the center of her life, and she had no way to fill it back up. It became all the worse when Imani started living in foster care with the Pattersons, and Renee saw that she was losing her daughter in more ways than one. As a result, she needed to make drastic changes to halt her decline down the ladder and start rebuilding everything piece by piece.

Thus, by the time the film’s final court hearing comes around, Renee has turned her life around to comply with the demands the judge put on her in the first place. She has all the bases covered to ensure she can provide a stable household for Imani to return to. Yet, the ultimate decision still falls upon the judge, as he must choose whether Imani goes back to live with her mother or continues to live with the Pattersons. After much deliberation, the judge tells Renee that Imani would continue to live with her foster parents in any other circumstance. However, after seeing Renee’s grit and determination to revamp her life, he agrees to expedite the reunion between mother and daughter – meaning he allows Imani to go back to Renee, albeit under strict conditions. For the protagonist, this counts as a massive victory no matter what.

What Does Renee Learn During Her Rebuilding Journey?

Although Imani goes back to her mother and starts living with her again, the film’s central message revolves around Renee’s personal growth as she comes to terms with her own childhood traumas. As a product of the foster system, Renee grew up distrusting everything and everyone, especially because her foster father molested her. Shaped by these issues, she grew up to be an independent woman who was reticent in relying on others whenever she faced a problem. However, over the course of the narrative, Renee realizes that she cannot do everything on her own, particularly when her daughter’s fate might be concerned. So, she begins asking people to help her climb out of her hole, like Jeff, Kelly, and Tiana, who slowly radicalize her mindset and compel her to trust others again.

In some ways, Renee’s confidence in herself was the product of her insecurities, which manifested in her acting like she was the only one capable of tackling the issues in her life. But if anything, her struggles of reuniting with Imani teach her that not everyone is terrible, like the people she grew up with. Instead, she learns that more people are willing to help her and are generally kind, generous souls. Her issues stemmed from her never reaching out to those who may have always been happy to help. She rectifies this flawed inner belief by the end and starts to move on a new path, one where she can be more social and appreciative of those around her and their desire to support her. It is vital that she forges these connections as it creates a safety net around her that stops her from spiraling downwards like she did in the film’s beginning.