FEATURE DOCUMENTARY | COMING SOON
Guided by her grandmother’s unmarked photographs, an American college student journeys through Romania, searching for the village her family once called home.
Synopsis:
Mima, an American college student, embarks on a road trip to the rural Romanian village where her grandmother, Esther, was born. She asks her close friend Jacob, a recent film-school dropout, to join her in the old country, along with an 18-year-old translator whom she found on Facebook. Decades after Esther’s death, Mima must rely on her grandmother’s unmarked photos of the village and recorded oral history to orient herself in the remote area. The trio does everything in their power to find any corroborating evidence of Esther’s presence in Romania. It is only after a chance encounter in a cemetery, however, that the deeper unknowns animating Mima’s journey begin to move towards resolution. I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Here captures what it means to be young in the 2020s. It is a punk-rock response to a media-saturated upbringing, detachment from one’s history, and a bold statement of what to do about it.
Meet the Filmmakers
Madeline “Mima” Kohn
Protagonist and Executive Producer
Madeline “Mima” Kohn, is an Urban Studies major at the University of Pennsylvania, is passionate about city planning and Jewish history. The youngest of seven children, Mima is the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors from diverse Jewish backgrounds. She is particularly interested in the histories of Jewish migration and communal identity.
Mima’s exploration of European Jewish history began unexpectedly. She grew up speaking Polish with her babysitter and, at 16, traveled to Poland on a Holocaust education tour. Despite the prevalent view of Poland as unsafe for Jews, Mima felt a connection to the culture and Jewish sites, partly through her language skills. This led her to volunteer at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow and, later, work with the Lauder Foundation as a strategic consultant for Jewish communities in Madrid, Sofia, and Helsinki.
Through this work, Mima saw both the resilience of Jewish life in Europe and the lingering shadow of the Holocaust. It made her realize that there was important communal work to be done in the U.S. as well, especially regarding the complex legacies of Jewish history. She began to focus on understanding her own family’s pre-Holocaust history, which, as she discovered, no longer exists in its original form anywhere in the world. Mima’s quest is to uncover and understand the lost origins of her ancestors, whose journey to the U.S was not from a specific place, but from a history that she now seeks to reconstruct.
Her Hebrew name, “Mima,” meaning “aunt” in Yiddish, honors her mother’s aunts who perished in the Holocaust.
Jacob Pincus
Director, Producer, Editor
Jacob Pincus is a filmmaker, artist, and community organizer based in Los Angeles. As founder of Cove Films, executive director of Our Art Fund Inc., and co-founder of Chavurah USC, he balances creative work with community leadership.
Growing up in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, Pincus began his filmmaking journey at 15 with Pincus Pictures, shooting events and promotional videos to fund his filmmaking dreams. His first film, Stronger than Steel (2019), explores the aftermath of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and was screened at over 30 film festivals worldwide winning several awards.
During a transformative gap year in Jerusalem at the renowned Shalom Hartman Institute, Pincus immersed himself in Jewish learning while apprenticing with director Amichai Greenberg on The Pool. He also engaged in human rights and peace activism, working with Palestinians and Israelis fighting for freedom for all.
Pincus later attended USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, studying Film and Television Production with a minor in Political Philosophy. After two years, he left to pursue independent filmmaking outside the traditional corporate Hollywood system.
His artistic work explores personal identity within our increasingly homogenous, hyper-saturated media landscape and examines the invisible systems that constrain human freedom and agency. Beyond directing his own projects, Pincus works on movie sets in various production roles and is an assistant producer at New Theater Hollywood, an experimental interdisciplinary black box theater. His commitment to both his craft and community continues to define his artistic journey.
Charlie McCollum
Producer
Charlie McCollum is a producer and director based in New York City. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he studied Film Production and English.
At the core of his filmmaking ethos is an emphasis on authentic storytelling executed in forms not seen before. His approach to producing revolves around hands-on collaboration and team building-– taking immense pride in overseeing a project from start to finish through strong partnerships. As a director and writer himself, he is a second set of eyes for creatives to bounce their boldest ideas off of. Recent credits include Idlewild, Sultana, Blue, In The Dark, and music videos for Runner and Miranda Del Sol.
As a descendant of Jewish relatives forced out of Poland during World War II, McCollum is honored to be a part of telling this story. He hopes that the documentary can showcase a broader scope of Jewish history through a modern Jewish-American lens–– uncovering bits and pieces of a communal past that was silenced by atrocity. However, the documentary is just as much about the present and future as it is about the past. Through Mima’s journey, McCollum hopes the third generation can see themselves through her experiences (as well as Pincus’s self-referential and authentic directorial style) as they reflect on their own relationships with their family, faith, and heritage.
Sabrina Greco
Editor
Sabrina Greco is an LA based director and editor. She was born in Yonkers, NY and attended Boston University. As a director, her first feature film “Lockjaw” recently premiered at Slamdance in 2025, while her previous short film “Anthony’s” premiered at Palm Springs Shortfest in 2023. As an editor, she co-edited Eugene Kotlyarenko’s most recent film “The Code” which premiered at Fantasia in 2024 along with various other short films. She continues to write and direct her own work while editing with other filmmakers on their projects.
COVE FILMS 