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
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.
Learn more
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.”
Learn more
Dreams of Daraa
Hanadi dreams of a safe home for her family, but that means fleeing Syria with her daughters and finding her kidnapped husband in an international whirlwind.
Learn more
Tell Me No Lies: The Real John Pilger
Tell Me No Lies will tell the inside story of John Pilger, Australia’s most famous journalist.
Learn more
Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau, the inconnu célèbre, was one of the most celebrated and prolific figures in France of the 20th century. Explore his life, not-stop artistic output and the personal moments that formed him in this feature documentary.
Learn more
Darcelle
Until her passing in 2023, Darcelle XV was the World’s Oldest Performing Drag Queen. DARCELLE is the story of a single life. But it’s also the story of how tenacity and bravery in the face of unrelenting prejudice, changed lives and opportunities for generations to come.
Learn more
Jennifer, 42
Based on a real case, JENNIFER, 42 tells the harrowing true story of the life and murder of Jennifer Magnano. Voiced by her three children, and told through animation, JENNIFER, 42 reveals the true nature of domestic violence and a woman's life and death battle for freedom.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
Jamaica Kincaid: Liberating the Daffodil (working title)
This riveting portrait of writer Jamaica Kincaid traces her life from growing up in colonial Antigua, to working as an au pair in Scarsdale, N.Y. as a teenager, to becoming a staff writer for The New Yorker at age 26.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
YOU DESERVE TO DIE: The Story of Gamergate
YOU DESERVE TO DIE is the bizarre true story of how a group of misogynistic "Gamers" wrote the playbook for weaponizing social media as told by those they relentlessly targeted.
Learn more
Next Generation Sex
What begins as a few local parental rights groups resisting sex education erupts into a national firestorm – revealing deeply personal stories and a larger cultural reckoning. At stake is the critical question: “Do kids have a fundamental right to knowledge about their own bodies and sexuality?”
Learn more
Tribal Strands
Two self-made hair artists, create authentic hairstyles, leading the anti-hair discrimination movement. In addition, they inspire Black people to embrace their natural hair worldwide while exploring the intersections between modern and ancient African indigenous hairstyles.
Learn more
Ever and the sharks
A female leading marine biologist and a teenage boy from a disadvantaged fishermen community in northern Peru will embark on a quest to tag whale sharks in a scientific discovery that aims to save the species (and the boy’s future).
Learn more
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.
Learn more
Big Rock Burning
A gripping documentary exploring the resilient spirit of Malibu's Big Rock community as they rebuild from the ashes of the devastating Palisades Fire, one of America's worst wildfires.
Learn more