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
Being BeBe | The BeBe Zahara Benet Documentary
An ambitious immigrant from homophobic Cameroon struggles to build a successful career as a drag performer in the US after winning the First Season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Learn more
Darcelle
Until her passing in 2023, Darcelle XV was the World’s Oldest Performing Drag Queen. DARCELLE is the story of a single life. But it’s also the story of how tenacity and bravery in the face of unrelenting prejudice, changed lives and opportunities for generations to come.
Learn more
Next Generation Sex
Do kids have a basic right to learn about their own bodies and sexuality? A local backlash to sex ed sparks a national firestorm.
Learn more
Elsie
The film’s journey begins in Lansing, Michigan, in a local hub of lesbian community known colloquially as “Dyke Heights.” The longest-running lesbian periodical is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Lesbian Connection’s superfans – those who have subscribed since the 1970s– are trickling in from all over the country, from rural areas to...
Learn more
And Then One Day…
When a novel reveals her Jewish cattle-trading family didn’t leave Germany by choice but by coercion, Carole travels to her family’s town. There, she collaborates with high school students, uncovering in local archives how brutality takes hold, law by law, echoing patterns that are unfolding again in our own time.
Learn more
Girl Island: The Sandy Stone Story
How does a nice, quiet Jewish boy born in New Jersey in 1936 become a sound engineer for Jimi Hendrix, a lesbian separatist, the founder of Trans Studies, and the Goddess of Cyberspace?
Learn more
The Dead Zone
Every day in the United States, an estimated two people die waiting for trial. More than 400,000 others sit in jail on any given day - presumed innocent, yet trapped in a legal limbo known as pretrial detention. Four daring insiders across the South strive to solve America’s deadly jail crisis from the inside and keep hope alive in a race against time.
Learn more
Tantura: UnEarthed (formerly Road to Tantura)
For nearly two decades, a Palestinian-American filmmaker follows the trail of her father’s silence into the heart of a buried coastal village—uncovering a contested massacre, a family’s exile, and the quiet machinery of historical erasure.
Learn more
Bad Girl Marcia Tucker
After being fired from NYC's Whitney Museum for her radical exhibitions, feminist curator Marcia Tucker founded the New Museum in 1977 to champion marginalized artists. Through rare archive and insight from today's artworld rebels, BAD GIRL MARCIA TUCKER traces Marcia's defiant legacy – offering a blueprint for resistance in the face of contemporary threats to art, artists, and art institutions.
Learn more
1946: THE MISTRANSLATION THAT SHIFTED CULTURE
A journey which unveils the mystery of how theology, history, culture, and politics led to a Biblical mistranslation, the man who tried to stop it, and the impassioned academic crusade of the LGBTQIA+ Christian community-driven to discover the truth.
Learn more
INDÍGENA
To fulfill her mother’s dying wish, a filmmaker retraces her mother’s work as an activist and journalist during the Red Power Movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, bringing to light 500 years of Taino resistance and igniting her own journey of reclamation.
Learn more
Rubbish: The Queer Kingdom of Leilah Babirye
The decade-long story of a queer artist-activist from Uganda transforming discarded rubbish into visions of liberation.
Learn more
The Kids Are Not Alright
The Kids Are Not Alright is an intimate portrait of trauma following three families’ journeys as they work to shed light on the devastating impacts of the Troubled Teen Industry, pursue healing in the absence of justice, and fight to hold abusers accountable.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
The Feeling of Being Watched
When journalist Assia Boundaoui investigates rumors of surveillance in her Arab-American neighborhood in Chicago, she uncovers one of the largest FBI terrorism probes conducted before 9/11 and reveals its enduring impact on the community.
Learn more
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.
Learn more