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
Wisdom Gone Wild
WISDOM GONE WILD is an intimate documentary presenting a new look at dementia and caregiving. Rather than a portrait of loss, dementia is seen as a wisdom that has “gone wild.”
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ISKRA (Spark!)
Before Silicon Valley, Apple and Google, before Microsoft and Bill Gates, there was Yugoslavia and ISKRA. Overlooked and underrated, the non-aligned Yugoslav tech giant allowed East to connect with West. It was pioneering and avant-garde. Then... it suddenly disappeared.
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On Three Wheels
On Three Wheels follows Brooklyn based, Puerto Rican bike shop owner Sandra as she risks it all for her dream of giving every wheelchair bound child an adaptive bicycle- taking them from four wheels to three- while bearing witness to the stark realities of families raising children with disabilities.
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Reproductive Choices: Revisiting La Operacion
A documentary challenging the long-held belief that the U.S. government forced Puerto Rican women to be sterilized; the truth is more complex and examining the evidence from the women themselves casts a whole new light on this story.
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Paper City
Paper City tells the story of three survivors of the 1945 fire-bombing of Tokyo as they launch one final campaign to leave behind a record of this forgotten tragedy—before the last of them passes away.
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Landscapes of Memory
Weaving personal essay and intimate character studies, LANDSCAPES OF MEMORY explores Germany’s remembrance culture, and the uses and abuses of collective memory.
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Another Light on the Road: Robert Frank & June Leaf's Canadian Home
Two years after the passing of photographer Robert Frank, artist June Leaf returns to Nova Scotia to explore the special relationship they had to their adopted Canadian home of fifty years.
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Barbara Forever
BARBARA FOREVER is an exclusive look at the iconic life, work, & legacy of pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, tracing her prolific canon alongside never-before-seen documentations of her life and body, to reveal Hammer's unconventional attempts to live on forever.
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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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Gowanus Current
Gowanus Current is a documentary feature film about a neighborhood asking what is truly valuable in their community, and who gets to decide.
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The Source of Life (Te Puna Ora)
As the climate crisis threatens Tahiti, an alliance of women embarks on a sacred journey to protect their island home.
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Dépôt-Vente
After moving to a new country for love, a filmmaker creates a loving portrait of a Beirut thrift shop that embodies the spirit of her home in Lebanon.
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First We Bombed New Mexico
75 years after the world's first nuclear bomb - codename Trinity - is secretly detonated in southern New Mexico, a Latina cancer survivor catalyzes a movement demanding justice for a legacy of lethal radiation.
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Girls for Tomorrow (formerly GIRLS OF TOMORROW)
2015 - 2025 : From Obama, through Trump, and until Biden’s final presidential days, the Girls go through their twenties grappling with dreams of a fair, feminist, sustainable society in a patriarchal reality. While I have just become a mother and seek elevation, I follow them for a decade.
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How to Build a Library
Two tenacious Kenyan women are transforming a dilapidated, junk-filled library in downtown Nairobi. But first they must work with local government, raise several million dollars for the rebuild, and confront the ghosts of a problematic colonial history still trapped within the library walls.
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Seeing Stars
In this genre bending solo musical film, a legally blind writer waits in her eye Doctor’s office suspecting her low but long stable vision may be changing. Fighting fear, she inhabits her own stories of women with limited sight and limitless vision, turning them into stars to light her way.
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Finding Your Laughter
Finding Your Laughter follows Chicago comedian Arlieta Hall who is learning to use her own resources—stand up comedy and improvisation—as tools for both her own mental health and to be a caregiver for her father who is fading from Alzheimer's disease.
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The Art of Survival
The Art of Survival will follow a collection of artists around the globe, in their quest to come to terms with a history of sexual abuse, serving as an intimate study of the relation between art and catharsis in survivors of childhood trauma.
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