While fiscal sponsorship is a component of the program, unlike other sponsoring organizations, we also provide a suite of support services such as tailored consultations, discounts to our workshops and webinars with leading industry professionals, and other essential resources.
In the last 5 years, WMM’s Production Assistance Program has helped 194 films reach completion and assisted filmmakers in raising more than $46,000,000 from government, foundation, corporate or individual, and crowd-funded sources. Since its inception, the program has been a part of raising more than $100,000,000 and helping more than 1,000 films to completion.
Films and filmmakers we have supported have been nominated for or won Academy Awards for the last 22 years, including Oscar-winning documentary CITIZENFOUR by Laura Poitras, STRONG ISLAND by Yance Ford, SUGARCANE by Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat, TO KILL A TIGER by Nisha Pahuja, THE ETERNAL MEMORY by Maite Alberdi and THE BARBER OF LITTLE ROCK by John Hoffman and Christine Turner, the last two of which were directed by PA alum. The program has also supported critically acclaimed fiction features like FAMILIAR TOUCH (dir. Sarah Friedland), Dee Rees’ PARIAH, I CARRY YOU WITH ME (dir. Heidi Ewing, prod. Mynette Louie), FAREWELL AMOR (dir. Ekwa Msangi, prod. Huriyyah Muhammad, Sam Bisbee, Josh Penn), and THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL (dir. Marielle Heller). We’re thrilled to continue to have a large presence at the Sundance Film Festival, including GOING TO MARS: THE NIKKI GIOVANNI PROJECT (Dir Michèle Stephenson), LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING (dir. Lisa Cortés), Sandi Tan’s SHIRKERS, which won the World Cinema Documentary Competition Award for Best Directing, and most recently SEEDS (dir. Brittany Shyne, prod. Danielle Varga), which won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Documentary. In addition to Sundance, films supported by our program premiere at major festivals like Berlin, Tribeca, CPH:DOX, and SXSW.
FIND PROJECTS AND FILMMAKERS TO SUPPORT
Hear, Eat, Home
A lyric portrait of how—through art, friendship, music, and food—New York immigrant musicians and artists understand the upheavals they faced in their home countries and answer new challenges that emerge as they make the US their home.
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Untitled Rajie Cook documentary
Rajie Cook designed the visual symbols used to navigate our world, but had to find his own way through his Palestinian identity. As his pioneering designs achieved worldwide acclaim, his visual art confronted the often-ignored suffering of his lineage. Cook's life journey was the arc of a first generation American
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Untitled Kenyan Politics Project
At a moment of historical transformation for Kenya’s ancient Lamu archipelago, the race for Governor has become a battle of extremely high-stakes. Amidst waves of violent terror attacks, billion dollar infrastructure projects, ethnic tensions and an open hostility towards female leadership, the winner will set this sleepy historical fishing village onto a trajectory that could make or break the community forever.
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Tribal Strands
Two self-made hair artists, create authentic hairstyles, leading the anti-hair discrimination movement. In addition, they inspire Black people to embrace their natural hair worldwide while exploring the intersections between modern and ancient African indigenous hairstyles.
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Coming Home: Fight for a Legacy
A group of daring women challenge gender roles to become the first female military pilots during WWII, only to have their achievements buried by the lies of those who wished them to fail.
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My Name Is Andrea
A cinematic evocation of key moments from the life of feminist outlaw Andrea Dworkin, maverick thinker and intellectual genius of the 20th Century. Through innovative use of archival footage and expressionistic dramatizations, the film pushes the creative boundaries of biographical documentary to challenge the current narratives on gendered violence.
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YOU DESERVE TO DIE: The Story of Gamergate
YOU DESERVE TO DIE is the bizarre true story of how a group of misogynistic "Gamers" wrote the playbook for weaponizing social media as told by those they relentlessly targeted.
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Life After
A gripping personal investigation that exposes the tangled web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying. Disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport uncovers shocking abuses of power as he amplifies the voices of the disability community and raises the alarm about the "right to die."
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Postmortem
POSTMORTEM, a hybrid documentary film and theater project, is a boundary-pushing crime drama about a girl who didn’t tell her childhood secret—and the woman she becomes, who does.
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The Endless Frontier
THE ENDLESS FRONTIER follows four passionate researchers hunting for cures and protecting the planet from disaster, when they unexpectedly find themselves on the frontlines in the fight for the future of science itself.
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American Fall
A road trip through the U.S. in the fall of 2024 to discover what unites us.
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Flashing
How women around the world experience and address menopause - a critical and understudied realm of women's sexual health and reproduction.
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Myself When I Am Real
Set in the year 2000, MYSELF WHEN I AM REAL is an experimental short film about a working mother and her teenage daughter who struggle to make friends and find belonging in a small Wisconsin town. It explores otherness, identity, and assimilation from the contrasting perspectives of childhood and adulthood.
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The Martha Mitchell Effect
She was once as famous as Jackie O. And then she tried to take down a President. Martha Mitchell was the unlikeliest of whistleblowers: a Republican cabinet wife who was discredited by the Nixon Administration in 1972 to keep her quiet. Until now.
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Hope of Escape
A true story that follows the incredible journey of an enslaved mother and daughter who must escape before they are sold and separated forever. Their only hope is to connect with their free relatives in the North and convince the most powerful abolitionists of their time to help them.
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Vena Aquatica
In a tender mosaic of El Salvador, women reveal the joys and perils of their lives, deeply bonded with water and land. Vena Acuática is shaped by the relationships among women who defend a landscape haunted by environmental negligence and forced migration.
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