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
Something Yellow
When Ani’s mother urges her to turn off the GPS, familiar Los Angeles streets fracture into surreal landscapes of memory and myth. Ani must find her way through them — only to realize she has to redefine home.
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Life After
A gripping personal investigation that exposes the tangled web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying. Disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport uncovers shocking abuses of power as he amplifies the voices of the disability community and raises the alarm about the "right to die."
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River of Grass
A time-traveling guide channeled by the land recounts the Everglades’ violent past and warns of Florida's precarious future. Told through Miami journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas's The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), the film explores how Florida’s vulnerability to climate change is historically rooted in the Everglades’ ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.
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A Place of Absence
Decades after the disappearance of her uncle during Argentina’s dictatorship, filmmaker Marialuisa Ernst joins the Caravan of Mothers, a group of Central American women traveling the migrant trail in search of loved ones who have disappeared trying to reach the US.
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From Pain, Pursuit
It's as common as cancer and causes more infertility than any other disease, yet diagnosis requires surgery, and most people wouldn't recognize its name. A filmmaker with a decade of debilitating pain seeks answers from top researchers, the inventor of video laparoscopy, and a new generation of patient-scientists.
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Bought/Broken
“Bought/Broken” is an interactive experience that examines the relationships and violence of abuse through the lens of objects bought, broken and repaired, evoking memories through objects and exploring the idea of gain and loss. I have been compositing the experiences and stories of domestic violence survivors.
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Next Generation Sex
Do kids have a basic right to learn about their own bodies and sexuality? A local backlash to sex ed sparks a national firestorm.
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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.
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How to Build a Library
Two tenacious Kenyan women are transforming a dilapidated, junk-filled library in downtown Nairobi. But first they must work with local government, raise several million dollars for the rebuild, and confront the ghosts of a problematic colonial history still trapped within the library walls.
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Untitled NY Dance Film
A raw, cinematic, experimental dance film, that features New York’s avant guard arts scene, and encapsulates the life a New York artist through a mash up of original choreography, music, verite documentary, and magical realism.
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Own It! The Kelso Way
Does capitalism work better if workers own capital? Lawyer Louis Kelso gave America a way to find out.
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Taking Venice
TAKING VENICE uncovers the true story behind rumors that the U.S. government and a team of high-placed insiders rigged the 1964 Venice Biennale – the Olympics of art – so their chosen artist, Robert Rauschenberg, could win the Grand Prize.
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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.
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It's Not Who I Am
Women are going to jail and prison at rates that have increased by 700% since 1980, a rate 50% higher than men. When they are released, they have expectations of starting life anew, however, in their re-entry journey, they are often confronted with an unforgiving society.
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The Hammer
Disabling a military aircraft with a hammer is madness. Doing it twice is divine.
This film is a project of Documentary Australia and is sponsored by Women Make Movies as part of our ongoing partnership in support of independent filmmakers.
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LEE: We Are Our Times
Raised in a Lower East Side NYC project, Lee Quiñones’ urgency and need to express himself drove him to become one of the greatest artists to emerge from the 70s/80’s graffiti movement.
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After the Deluge
A year into the Covid-19 pandemic, Sharka, a scrappy expressionistic painter, finds respite from the isolation of her small apartment on a park bench. When Bridget, a self-possessed lone traveler dragging a suitcase, encroaches and sits down next to her, angry sparks fly until the two find unexpected common ground.
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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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