SF Jewish Film Festival: I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Here

Q&A with Director Jacob Pincus, participant/subject Madeline “Mima” Kohn, producer Charlie McCollum (Producer), and editor Sabrina Greco expected to attend!

Mima finds herself in the rural Romanian town of Săcel, the birthplace of her grandmother, Esther. She brings her good friend and the film’s director, Jacob Pincus, along to find evidence of Esther’s life before it was devastated by the Holocaust. Mima has an archived tape recording and a handful of photographs to guide her, but little else. As their journey unfolds, finding out anything about Esther’s life proves difficult in a community where historical traces are scarce.

I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Here is not about the journey–or even the result–but about not knowing. After Mima’s mother’s death, her grandmother Esther loomed even larger in the family’s imagination. What can you do in the face of absence and grief but attempt a degree of reconciliation? Pincus captures Mima’s determination, frustration, resolve, and warmth with a deft, roving handheld camera. He includes collage-like snippets of their journey alongside beautiful, contemplative shots of the places Esther once lived, all while illuminating Mima’s interiority as she gathers memories to bring home. —Karina Curry