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
Index:Trace
Index:Trace is a film that portrays the past, present, and future impacts of the nuclear fuel trajectory in all 50 states, — uranium mines, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and nuclear waste — as told by impacted communities, scientists and activists who are working together for nuclear abolition and environmental justice.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
8x10
8x10: From The Confines of Solitary To The Front Lines of Criminal Justice Reform is the story of one man’s experience with solitary confinement and his journey to change a system bent on destroying his humanity.
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
The Hammer
Disabling a military aircraft with a hammer is madness. Doing it twice is divine.
Learn more
MACHTAT
The daily life chronicle of Fatma and her daughters Najeh and Waffeh, wedding musicians in a small town in Tunisia.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
Made in Ethiopia
Flamboyant Chinese businesswoman Motto needs every bit of mettle and charm she can muster to drive forward the biggest Chinese industrial park in Ethiopia. Having staked their future on the promise of industrialization, Ethiopian farmer Workinesh and factory worker Beti - like their country - find themselves at a crossroads.
Learn more
As Prescribed
“Benzo warriors” fight a grassroots battle to save others from the devastating consequences of the little pill they took as prescribed.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
Most Dangerous Women: Women of the West
A documentary short featuring women changemakers working to create a more just world. In the film, contemporary leaders in the U.S. West reflect on the early legacy of visible women in the region, as well as the challenges they and their peers face today, and their hopes for the future.
Learn more
Two Things Are True
In an attempt to confront childhood sexual trauma, filmmaker Sarah Hanssen decides to revise the abstract expressionist paintings of her deceased father. The project soon expands to involve collaborations with additional artists, revelations about other women still affected by their relationship with her father, the destruction of a devastating mythology,
Learn more
Big Fight in Little Chinatown
All across the globe, Chinatowns are under threat of disappearing – and along with them, the rich history of communities who fought from the margins for a place to belong. Big Fight in Little Chinatown documents the collective fight to save Chinatowns across North America.
Learn more
Ana Mendieta: Rebel by Nature
An intimate look at artist, Ana Mendieta, whose exile from her homeland Cuba inspired her pioneering art in the landscape. Family and friends speak out after more than 30 years, interwoven with newly discovered audio of the artist alongside her visually captivating Super 8 films.
Learn more
Fire Tender
Yurok Tribal Members return fire to the land toward cultural and ecological healing.
Learn more
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.
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
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.
Learn more