Death, Taxes, and the Daddying Heart of a Documentary
- Allan Shedlin
- Apr 17
- 6 min read
Guest post by Justin Schein
Documentary Filmmaker and D3F 2025 Atticus Award Winner, Death & Taxes
EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm Freshly returned from the Fathers and Families Coalition of America’s 26th annual conference in Los Angeles. I was honored to receive the Father of the Year award and be able to share two outstanding Atticus winners from our 4th annual Daddying Film Festival & Forum (D3F). It was particularly thrilling that Julietta Beutler-Lam, last year’s undergrad winner, was there to screen her amazing animated short film, A Trace. She had an opportunity to see how it resonated with an audience of close to 400 attendees. We also screened this year’s Best Short Film Atticus winner, A Letter from the Fathers, by Jamaican-Canadian filmmaker Tristan Barrocks.
One way to assess the impact of these films could have been measured by the tissues required to get through them, another by the intensity of discussion about these films throughout the conference and the many inquiries about showing these films at other conferences. This felt like a testament to one of our primary D3F goals, to offer filmmakers a safe medium and unique opportunity to share stories that encourage reflection and intentionality, and to express feelings about the fundamental and often unexplored father-child relationship.
We will be showing both films at this year’s 3rd annual Daddying Film Forum on Saturday, April 26, at Bryn Mawr College, a few minutes west of Philadelphia. Julietta, now serving as D3F’s assistant producer, will be with us and will have an opportunity to talk about her film.
Tristan’s film will be one of the many winning films screened as a catalyst for rich discussion about some of the stereotypes and challenges of daddying. Justin Schein, the award-winning documentary filmmaker, is the winner of this year’s D3F Judges' Prize for Best Documentary Feature, Death & Taxes. He is the guest author of today’s Daddying blog post. In the spirit of fathers’ birthright for “dad jokes” and word play, this feels particularly fitting during the very taxing times we’re living in. Looking forward to seeing you on April 26th!
Justin's commentary below was originally published in the Orlando Sentinel under the title "Revised estate tax could address wealth inequality," on tax day, April 15, 2025:
It was 1986 when my dad convinced my mother to move to Florida. Mom, a professional dancer and lifelong New Yorker, was reluctant, but Dad – newly retired after a lifetime of hard work – was emphatic. He loved the sun and the golf. But most of all, he loved Florida's low taxes.
Dad had lived the American Dream, growing up during the Depression, the youngest son of garment workers in East New York, Brooklyn, went from sharing a bed with his brother to being a wealthy and powerful CEO living on Park Avenue. Thanks to his service in the Navy at the end of World War II, he earned a degree at NYU, followed by Harvard Law School, both paid for by the GI Bill – a program that not only educated a generation of (mostly white) Americans, but also provided loans for them to buy homes, start families, and build a foundation of generational wealth.
Ike had led us past the Nazis, and now was ushering in the rise of greatest middle class in history...and all with taxes that were as high as 90 percent.
Dad's career path was meteoric, rising from a position as a junior lawyer at CBS to the head of Columbia Records' international division, and then president of Sony America. He was determined to save and invest so that his young family didn’t have to endure the insecurity he felt as a child. So, he began to build an estate plan for his wife and two young boys to maximize his gains – as so many people rightfully do. And there was no aspect of that tax code that he detested more than the estate tax.
The modern federal estate tax, a levy on assets left behind at death, was created by Teddy Roosevelt at the dawn of the 20th century to address the massive wealth inequality created by the robber barons. It was intended to impact only the richest Americans, and serve as a brake on dynastic wealth that warped our politics – and for many years, it did.
But by the end of the chaotic 1960s, inflation began to rise, causing the estate tax to impact more and more families. After Ronald Reagan’s landslide in 1980, he slashed the estate tax rate and increased the amount that was exempt. And Dad, once a New Deal Democrat, was enthusiastically on board.
As Dad began to think about retirement in the late 1980s, the political battle over the estate tax – dubbed the "death tax" by its opponents – began to heat up. Many, like my dad, saw it as "un-American" and a form of "double taxation," they argued. Although, in fact, much of the wealth derived from investments had never been taxed under the existing system.
For my dad, one of those steps was leaving New York for legal residency in Florida, and the tax benefits it provided. But my mother missed the North, and after a decade of "snowbirding," she began to push back on that arrangement. In fact, the disagreement almost blew their marriage apart. In 2001, just weeks after 9/11, they separated. Dad made his annual drive to Florida alone, while Mom found a small apartment in Manhattan. To me, it felt like he had chosen lower taxes over his wife of 40 years.
My parents eventually reconciled and came to an agreement about how to split their time between Florida and the Northeast – one that allowed their heirs, like me, to reap the financial benefits. But as the beneficiary of my dad’s hard work and careful planning, I am also concerned.
To me, it felt like he had chosen lower taxes over his wife of 40 years.
My father passed away in 2008. Since then, wealth inequality in the U.S. has skyrocketed. For many Americans, the meritocracy that is at the heart of the American Dream, and that my dad benefited from, is becoming less and less achievable. A 2017 study showed that approximately 90 percent of children born in 1940 earned more than their parents – but for children born in the 1980s, the figure dropped to about 50 percent.
Tax policy is a key component of that decline in social mobility. The fate of the estate tax – which, if fairly applied, could help tens of millions of Americans struggling under the weight of the cost of education, housing and health care – is once again on the table, as Congress prepares to renew Donald Trump's 2017 tax cut.
The real question is: what is the inheritance that we want to leave our children? For me, it goes beyond financial security to democracy itself. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, "We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
A fair tax system is where that answer starts.
3rd Annual Daddying Film Forum
SaturDAY, APRIL 26
LIVE @ Bryn Mawr College, PA
Justin Schein is a dad to two sons and a daughter. He has been shooting and directing character-driven social issue documentaries for 35 years. He grew up in New York City until his parents departed for Sanibel, Florida for the sun and the lower taxes. His 2024 film, Death & Taxes, screened at the 4th annual Daddying Film Festival & Forum (D3F), winning the D3F Judges' Prize for Best Documentary Feature, and also was a Florida Film Festival official selection. His previous film, Left On Purpose (2016), which won the Audience Award at DOCNYC, recounted his friendship with an aging anti-war activist who decided his last political act would be to take his own life. Justin's 2009 film, No Impact Man, premiered at Sundance and screened around the world. As a cinematographer, he has shot on more than 60 films for broadcasters, including HBO, Nat Geo, BBC, Discovery, and PBS, taking him from the White House to Iraq with Kofi Annan to Ground Zero in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Most recently, he was cinematographer on Crip Camp (Netflix), produced by the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions, which won the Audience Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated in 2021 for an Academy Award as Best Documentary Feature. Justin received his Masters Degree in Documentary Film from Stanford University and co-founded Shadowbox Films in 1998.
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