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
Flood
Katy returns to her childhood home to attempt to reconnect to her evangelical father, years after leaving the Christian faith. What could possibly go wrong?
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Anne Sexton:
Tell Me Your Answer True
She loved life and yearned for death. Anne Sexton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, ‘one of the most important American poets of her generation’ was encouraged to write as an antidote to her open struggle with social convention, mental illness, and suicidal ideation. For the first time, a film follows the paths of this fascinating woman poet.
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The Coma Club
THE COMA CLUB follows four matriarchs as their loved ones emerge from comas caused by injuries sustained during America's recent wars. Moving between an annual retreat and their lives back home, the film offers a rare, intimate portrait of caregiving and the resilience of families living in combat’s long shadow.
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Good Fire
After more than one hundred years of fire suppression, Yurok people are returning Indigenous fire medicine to the land in order to heal the world.
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A Double Life
The filmmaker goes on a journey of discovery to unravel the mystery of her uncle’s past as a civil rights activist lawyer and political fugitive and his alleged involvement in an alleged prison escape attempt which left six people dead, his 13 years as a political fugitive and his return in 1984 to stand trial and gain his acquittal in 1986, returning to his legal aid work after 15 years. The film presents a multi-layered portrait of a turbulent era and the role of one individual seeking justice for others and later for himself.
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ARTIFACTS
The life of a successful yet isolated photographer changes as she learns how to cope with a rare visual disease.
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The Road to Independence (Working Title)
Seeking to give a nuanced and humanized view of the Vietnam-American war and its complex reverberations, this documentary explores the perspective of Vietnamese youth and Communist veterans as they discuss the past and their dreams for Vietnam's future.
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Blind AF
A blind female Paralympic champion and world-record holder sets out to become the first blind person to ride a single, non-tandem, bike across the US, while confronting painful truths about her past that she’s spent a lifetime trying to outrun. Blind AF is about trauma, transcendence and power of self-belief.
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9-Month Contract
For an orphan Jana, motherhood has always been priceless. When she has to raise a kid single and homeless, Jana becomes a surrogate mother to offer her daughter the life she’s never had. Nine months and 14.000 USD - is it as simple and priceless as it sounds?
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Home Court
HOME COURT traces the ascent of Ashley Chea, a basketball prodigy whose life intensifies amid recruitment, injury, and triumph throughout her high school years.
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Karuara, People of the River
A film about spiritual beings that live in the Amazons’ rivers, and an indigenous community’s struggle to save these sacred water guardians.
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Sitting Still
Artist, scholar, architect, landscape architect, professor, author, urban visionary, and unparalleled designer of cities, Laurie Olin is a true Renaissance man who, along with world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, takes us on a visual, eye-opening journey through natural and built environments, revealing the connective tissue for creating healthy and humane societies.
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None of This Matters
Struggling filmmaker Shaina Feinberg travels to Maine to interview trailblazing TV director and teacher Joan Darling. Over years of filming, Shaina uncovers Joan’s final storytelling wish and enlists her former mentees and collaborators to fulfill it, only to find the 90-year-old legend has a few plot twists of her own.
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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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Rooting Souls
Sparked by Zivia Berkowitz’s ambitious vision and self-filmed footage, ROOTING SOULS explores three emerging alpinists, organizers, & educators preparing to summit Mt. Kenya. Intricate portraits of access, representation & healing within the Black diaspora & outdoor adventure worlds emerge in this feature documentary, inviting audiences to re-envision community and success.
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SORORITY STORY
SORORITY STORY tells the unexamined story of racial discrimination in one of the largest and most exclusive private clubs in America: white college sororities.
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