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
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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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.
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Awra Amba
In rural Ethiopia, the village of Awra Amba has defied patriarchy, religion, and hierarchy for over 50 years– building a peaceful, gender-equal society from scratch. But as civil war erupts and their founder is forced into exile, the community must fight to protect its fragile vision from collapse.
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Recovery City
Recovery City is an intimate, unflinching portrait of four bold women who refuse to let themselves or their community give in to the stigma and despair of addiction.
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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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Dépôt-Vente
After moving to a new country for love, a filmmaker creates a loving portrait of a Beirut thrift shop that embodies the spirit of her home in Lebanon.
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Disruption
A British artist-activist, a game designer, and a queer farmer in India create a survival game, only to face the brutal realities of climate change, corporate greed, and identity. As life imitates play, winning demands sacrifices they never anticipated.
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Gowanus Current
Gowanus Current is a documentary feature film about a neighborhood asking what is truly valuable in their community, and who gets to decide.
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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.
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Vena Aquatica
In El Salvador women are the protectors of water and land, they are the veins circulating life throughout this Central American territory; VENA AQUATICA is a sacred journey that flows through a spectrum of the realities carried by communities at the forefront of ecocide and extractivism.
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This Body, Too/ Y Este Cuerpo Tambien
Face with the decision to replace my expired breast implants or have them removed, I grapple with the concepts of femininity and gender norms as a Dominican immigrant and an intersex-woman.
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9-Month Contract
For an orphan Jana, motherhood has always been priceless. When she has to raise a kid single and homeless, Jana becomes a surrogate mother to offer her daughter the life she’s never had. Nine months and 14.000 USD - is it as simple and priceless as it sounds?
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The Portal
A documentary and book with a global vision to shift humanity out of a state of crisis. The Portal follows six real-life stories that all overcome trauma, anxiety, depression and PTSD using a simple yet powerful technique. What does the planet look like if we all did this?
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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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I AM NOT A SPY
I AM NOT A SPY is a first-person documentary exploring the Russian electoral process under Putin’s regime. A Russian-American filmmaker gains access to her local polling station during multiple elections to investigate their validity and understand the mindsets of voters as Russia becomes increasingly authoritarian and invades Ukraine.
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The Prison Outside
Sentenced to life for crimes he committed as a child, Terrence Graham took his fight for freedom all the way to the Supreme Court. After twenty-one years behind bars, he is finally getting out - but is life outside just another prison?
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DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE
With innovative dark humor, DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE examines how the promise of an American multiracial democracy faces a renewed backlash, culminating in the very real fears of an actual authoritarian takeover.
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