We Should Eat

Two sisters in a bathroom debate their different approaches to the patriarchy.

Completely distraught after the sudden loss of her dad, filmmaker Shaina Feinberg will do anything she can to connect to him again. She catalogues her dad's belongings - a calculator, a clock, a basket of lozenges. She forces her friends to wear his clothes and mimic his gestures. She takes a stab at making a webseries he'd always wanted to make - the name of which is "Senior Escort Service." And she combs through his journal, where she finds out about a process of dealing with grief that was invented by the grandchildren of nazis.

Mike Bruton is a clown with a drinking problem. Seriously: a real clown. Eager to pick up where he left off after a stint in rehab, Mike hops on his unicycle and takes off on an apology tour, starting with a visit to his childhood home in New Jersey and ending up in Brooklyn. Mike soon realizes that not everyone is ready to forgive him and his best bet at a life in recovery is to start small.

In this hearty exploration of family, Mary Feinberg recounts a story to her filmmaker daughter as she makes her famous eggplant ragout. As Mary revisits the deeply troubling start to her first marriage, her ragout simmers and bubbles—much like her on- and off-camera interactions with her daughter.

Two weeks before the birth of her first child, New Yorker Shaina Feinberg, recounts her reluctant journey to motherhood in a video letter to her son. Clearly influenced by old Woody Allen films, her letter becomes a series of vignettes that include her newly sober husband, her goofy Upper West Side parents, an adorable Shih Tzu, a neurotic shrink and her own views on daytime television.