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
We Are Volcanoes
Undisclosed project. Please contact filmmaking team for more information.
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Qatar Stars
Qatar Stars presents a four-year story of girlhood in all its joys and growing pains, through intimate access to a multinational rhythmic gymnastics school in Doha Qatar, led by a former Russian gymnast.
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Piece of Mind
PIECE OF MIND explores internal and external barriers to care for persons living with serious mental illness, the consequences and solutions, told through the stories of a man with bipolar disorder, a mother whose son has schizophrenia, and siblings of a sister with schizoaffective disorder shot by police and survived.
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Providencia
When a Colombian woman confronts a genetic legacy of early-onset Alzheimer’s, her family's fate becomes entwined with scientists racing for a cure, before memory itself disappears.
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Arrest The Midwife
The shocking arrest of midwives in a rural healthcare desert leaves a community stranded, and spurs the emergence of a very unlikely group of fierce political activists – Amish and Mennonite women who break with their traditions to stand up and speak out for women’s reproductive rights.
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Roots of Resilience
Roots of Resilience is a documentary feature about Northern temperate rainforests and the people determined to protect and restore them. The film profiles two communities linked by latitude – one racing to protect what remains, the other seeding renewal – of forests that sustain us all.
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None of This Matters
Struggling filmmaker Shaina Feinberg travels to Maine to interview trailblazing TV director and teacher Joan Darling, now 90. But over years of filming, the intended biopic transforms into an intimate vérité portrait of two artists at different points in their lives, finding unexpected connection.
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This Way Out
'This Way Out' is a feature documentary following a group of previously incarcerated seniors as they fight for reforms to the parole boards of New York. This character-driven documentary explores the concepts of punishment, redemption, and what it means to heal.
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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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HYSTERIA
Three women discover that what happened to them wasn’t an accident. It was built into the system. Their stories open onto a haunting investigation into the enduring legacy of medical sexism. HYSTERIA is both a searing cry for help - and an urgent call for change.
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Sundays at Café Tabac
Step into the electrifying realm of radical glamour, where Sundays at Café Tabac immortalizes the iconic lesbian night that lit up New York’s East Village from 1993 to 1995. A vibrant celebration of diversity and unapologetic self-expression, this unforgettable gathering not only transformed lives but also mirrored the surge of visibility that sent shockwaves through mainstream media—during a time when being seen was a matter of survival.
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Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bears Ville
Peter Valentine, diagnosed schizophrenic and unmedicated all his life, fought MIT while they demolished his neighborhood to create a new development- University Park. After 7 years in court with MIT, they gifted Peter the apartment building he lived in, moving it to another street.
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Rocky Flats
What happens when a massive nuclear weapons plant closes down in your neighborhood? ROCKY FLATS is the story of one community's fight in Colorado to uncover the truth about the toxic legacy of the Cold War in their backyards.
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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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SuperD!ville
We are creating a web series for public schools focusing on social and emotional learning for children with dyslexia and attention issues. Our mission is to help kids succeed in school and life because of, and not in spite of, their learning differences.
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The Movement of Violence, Northern Ireland
The Movement of Violence, N.I. is an anthemic love letter to Northern Ireland. An experimental dance documentary investigating how violence lingers in the body, how memory shapes gesture, and how dance becomes an act of release, resilience, and restitution.
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