An Interview with Shaina Feinberg, JFI Filmmaker in Residence
The Jewish Film Institute pleased to welcome six independent documentary filmmakers to its 2025 Filmmakers in Residence program. The year-long fellowship provides creative, marketing, and production support for emerging and established filmmakers whose projects explore and expand thoughtful consideration of Jewish history, life, culture, and identity.
Throughout the year, JFI will be diving deep into each Resident’s creative practice here on our blog. This month, JFI is focusing on filmmaker Shaina Feinberg and her film None of this Matters.
Hello Shaina! Thanks for taking some time for this interview. To start off, what’s the genesis of this project? Why did you decide to take it on?
Shaina Feinberg: In 2022, I was struggling to balance my career and motherhood. My husband is also an artist, and he’d gotten a gig to perform at Lincoln Center for several months, which meant that I was alone with our kids A LOT and not making films. I’d met Joan Darling (over zoom) a year earlier and we loved each other. She was an icon! One of the first women to direct TV. We’d kept in touch and in the fall of 2022, I decided to meet her in person in Maine. I brought a friend, his camera and my sound gear.
“Joan is hilarious…I recently filmed her for her 90th birthday and she told me about an obscure Jewish holiday where if you go outside you get sucked up into cracks in the universe. She and I delighted in the idea of that holiday!”
Where are you in the filmmaking process?
I’ve done a ton of shooting over the past three years. Mainly of me and Joan. Recently, I’ve been interviewing Joan’s past mentees and collaborators. I still have a lot of shooting left to do. And fundraising! I just edited my first clip of the feature this week. So I have a very rough four minutes of the film so far! I can’t wait to work on the edit more. I did wind up making a short film about my first couple of visits to see Joan. And that’s set to premiere soon. That short inspired the feature.
How is the JFI Filmmaker Residency helping you develop your project?
It’s incredible! This is my first doc feature and being able to regularly meet with the group and workshop our stories, our log lines, everything, it’s just so amazing. Everyone in the cohort has helped me to think about my story more clearly. I am so grateful to Marcia and the cohort and really hyped to be part of it.
What will surprise your audience when they see your film? How does this story add to our collective understanding of Jewish life, culture, history or identity?
The most surprising thing will be how funny my subject is. Joan is hilarious. We have good comedy chemistry. I recently filmed her for her 90th birthday and she told me about an obscure Jewish holiday where if you go outside you get sucked up into cracks in the universe. She and I delighted in the idea of that holiday! How will the film add to our collective understanding of Jewish life? It’ll be 80 minutes of two Jewish ladies. One of whom has had a remarkable impact on the world. And her Jewishness has seeped into everything she does!
If you could screen your film as a double feature with any film, what would you choose and why?
Ishtar! I love that movie. It’s so hilarious and ultimately about a friendship. Which is what my film is about too.
Shaina Feinberg is an award-winning American filmmaker and writer. She spent her twenties making a punk sketch show called The Spew. She’s been on This American Life, her short doc “A Brief History of Hating My Face” (2023) was commissioned by The New York Times, her film, “Cleo From 8:20 to 2:35,” was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts grant (2024). Her column in The New York Times ran from 2019–2025. Her third book, Work (2024), has starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Book Page. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and kids.
About the JFI Filmmakers in Residence Program: The JFI Filmmakers in Residence Program is a year-long artist residency that provides creative, marketing, and production support for emerging and established filmmakers whose documentary projects explore and expand thoughtful consideration of Jewish history, life, culture, and identity.
