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
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.
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The Other Gaza
Gaza is a war zone. But it’s also the birthplace of Wafa Jamil, and the home of her family. The Other Gaza shows how daily life in Gaza really is, with sorrow and joy existing side-by side. For the audience to understand, as well as her young daughter Leia.
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Hope of Escape
A true story that follows the incredible journey of an enslaved mother and daughter who must escape before they are sold and separated forever. Their only hope is to connect with their free relatives in the North and convince the most powerful abolitionists of their time to help them.
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Presente!
Five years after the assassination of Marielle Franco, a young community leader born in the favela of Rocinha, Magda Gomes, follows the journeys of Black women in Brazilian politics as she contemplates which path to take toward her future.
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We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuue'm Mehl Mech
Since time immemorial, Yurok people have placed fire on the land to maintain a balanced ecosystem. In the past century, settlers banned fire and the environment and people have suffered. Now, Yurok people are returning fire medicine to heal the land.
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Postmortem
POSTMORTEM, a play about one woman’s reckoning with her past and a documentary about its staging, explores the healing power of the creative process.
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Milisuthando
‘Milisuthando’ is a coming-of-age personal essay film on love and what it means to be human in the context of race, explored through the memories of Milisuthando – who grew up during apartheid but didn’t know it was happening until it was over.
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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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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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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,
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Jinwar
Jinwar is a feature documentary about a Syrian mother’s complex relationship with her children, one of which she had to abandon in order to save the other one.
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The In Between
The in Between is a portrait of a unique community that follows the exceptional but very normal lives of the citizens of the sister cities of Eagle Pass, Texas and Piedras Negras, Coahuila along the U.S. / Mexico border, offering an intimate look into the heart of Mexican-American identity.
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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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Barbara Forever
BARBARA FOREVER is an exclusive look at the iconic life, work, & legacy of pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, tracing her prolific canon alongside never-before-seen documentations of her life and body, to reveal Hammer's unconventional attempts to live on forever.
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Will They Ever Come Back?
Driving down a long Colombian road, Angela and her sister enter the indigenous land where their father, an Afro-descendant farmer, was forcibly disappeared years ago. In a dream, he asks to be found. The journey confronts them with mysticism and a violated community that resists.
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