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
TURBULENCE
How do we overcome the heartbreaks, sorrows and traumas we endure or witness, and come out whole?
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Wisdom Gone Wild
WISDOM GONE WILD is an intimate documentary presenting a new look at dementia and caregiving. Rather than a portrait of loss, dementia is seen as a wisdom that has “gone wild.”
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God is a Pelican
“God is a Pelican” is a stop-motion animated short that follows two misfit middle-school girls’ intense, queer, and turbulent friendship as they create their own religion.
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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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Being Olimpia
After creating a groundbreaking law against cyberviolence, Olimpia wages an internal battle to heal her wounds and reclaim her name.
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And Then One Day… (formerly SOMETHING REMAINS)
After uncovering her Jewish family’s names in a German novel, a filmmaker returns to her ancestral rural town. Immersed with contemporary high school students, she discovers how Nazi-era laws erased lives who thrived there for generations—exposing how nations collapse not always in chaos, but through silence and compliance.
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Battleground
With rare access to three women who lead formidable anti-abortion organizations, Battleground is a feature documentary depicting how the pro-life movement has emerged as a central force in American politics.
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Wikipediology
Wikipediology is a documentary YouTube series that uncovers the hidden stories behind Wikipedia’s most contested science pages -revealing the messy, human process by which we collectively decide what counts as truth.
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Wittig, Yes!
More than 50 years ago, Monique Wittig, acclaimed writer, theorist, and lesbian feminist icon, dared to envision a world beyond gender. Told by her lifelong partner Sande Zeig, Wittig, Yes! unveils the synthesis of Wittig's public and private personas, tracing the origins of her groundbreaking theories.
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No Human Involved
NO HUMAN INVOLVED: a woman is destroyed by a 27-month prison sentence for prostitution in Arizona, the tenacity of those who fight for justice in her name.
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256,000 Miles From Home
On July 1, 2019, four former unaccompanied child refugees, now between 83 and 92 years old, arrive in Vienna, Austria, to begin a trip retracing the route they took 80 years ago, as Kindertransport children, traveling alone, without parents, fleeing to save their lives.
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See the Women
The daughter of an influential Native American activist raised in the center of the indigenous, political movement of the 70s, reclaims her identity as an activist and Indigenous woman by addressing the trauma that many women and children face, the one blind spot in her father’s own activism.
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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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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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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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*holds you tight*
A lonely night watchman develops a relationship with an AI chatbot, transforming his worldview and challenging his perception of identity and reality.
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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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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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