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
Confessions of a Female Gamer
An actress, reluctantly cast as the voice of the main character (a powerful warrior queen) in a smash-hit video game, becomes an unlikely heroine for female gamers around the world – and uncovers the battles unfolding in their lives.
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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.
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One Person, One Vote?
An in-depth look at the Electoral College, its slavery origins, and its impact on society today. The film features four dynamic electors from different parties offering insight into the inner workings of this often-misunderstood institution. A timely, nonpartisan film that will fill a stark information gap in American presidential elections.
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A Photographic Memory
A daughter attempts to piece together a portrait of her mother, a daring journalist, and a woman she never knew. Uncovering the vast archive Sheila Turner-Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers, the film explores memory, legacy and stories left untold.
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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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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.
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Untitled Indigenous vs. White Supremacy Ideology Film
There is an EPIDEMIC occurring in the United States and no one knows about it. From 2016 through 2019, over 19,000 Native American women and teenage girls have vanished and/or were murdered. Most of these crimes are never solved.
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Ex Libris, A Life in Bookplates
EX LIBRIS is an animated documentary film tracing the intimate, intricate world my grandfather created and lost in Vienna between the two world wars, and the exploding universe he reflected in his diaries.
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The Day Iceland Stood Still
When 90% of Iceland’s women walked off the job and out of their homes one morning in 1975 the country came to a standstill. Unexpectedly funny and told for the first time, this is the true story of one day that catapulted Iceland to the world’s superpower of gender equality.
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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.
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999: The Extraordinary Young Women on the First Official Transport to Auschwitz
“66% of millennials cannot say what Auschwitz was” even fewer know that the first Jewish transport to Auschwitz was 999 teenage girls and young women. Discover the truth behind this historical #MeToo moment and meet three survivors of the first transport, who are in their 90s, and their families.
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Dis-Ease
For centuries, the “war on disease” has been a metaphor we live and die by. But what if it weren’t a war?
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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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Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bears Ville
Peter Valentine, living on disability in an apartment, fought MIT while they demolished his neighborhood to develop University Park, claiming he couldn’t leave because it was his electromagnetic laboratory. Eventually, MIT gifted him the entire building, moving it to another street. Peter was diagnosed schizophrenic and unmedicated all his life.
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Something Remains
Imagine picking up a novel, thinking it’s fiction, only to find it’s your family’s untold story during 1930s Nazi Germany. This was Carole’s shocking discovery. Her journey to uncover buried secrets reveals haunting truths of intergenerational trauma and the dark forces of exclusion that tore her family from their homeland.
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WOMEN OF STEEL
1980-1994: hundreds of migrant/working-class women campaigned for equality against BHP, the biggest and most powerful company in Australia. In WOMEN OF STEEL, these ordinary women tell their personal stories of how they beat a giant and changed the workplace rules for women and men throughout the country.
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As Prescribed
“Benzo warriors” fight a grassroots battle to save others from the devastating consequences of the little pill they took as prescribed.
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