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
Reproductive Choices: Revisiting La Operacion
A documentary challenging the long-held belief that the U.S. government forced Puerto Rican women to be sterilized; the truth is more complex and examining the evidence from the women themselves casts a whole new light on this story.
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Aftermath
AFTERMATH revisits the wrenching, highly-publicized hate crime documented in Emmy-nominated THE BRANDON TEENA STORY, 25 years later. Through the eyes of a community grappling with the impact of Brandon’s life and death, the film explores loss, growth and life for LGBTQ individuals in Heartland America.
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Family Treasures Lost and Found
Journalist Karen A. Frenkel is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Her mother spoke of her wartime ordeal, but her father was silent. Karen embarked on a five-year quest to fill in the gaps, honor her parents and lost relatives, and ensure that memories would endure. This became an exciting detective story as she searched online and real-world archives and visited cities to better understand silence and loss.
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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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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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PERSIS
PERSIS is a documentary film exploring the legacy of the unheralded model-turned-actor Persis Khambatta.
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1946: THE MISTRANSLATION THAT SHIFTED CULTURE
A journey which unveils the mystery of how theology, history, culture, and politics led to a Biblical mistranslation, the man who tried to stop it, and the impassioned academic crusade of the LGBTQIA+ Christian community-driven to discover the truth.
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The Boy and the Suit of Lights
Hoping to rescue his family from poverty, young Borja is torn between tradition, controversy, and identity as he aspires to fulfill his family's dream of becoming a bullfighter.
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SORORITY STORY
SORORITY STORY tells the unexamined story of racial discrimination in one of the largest and most exclusive private clubs in America: white college sororities.
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Untitled Indigenous vs. White Supremacy Ideology Film
There is an EPIDEMIC occurring in the United States and no one knows about it. From 2016 through 2019, over 19,000 Native American women and teenage girls have vanished and/or were murdered. Most of these crimes are never solved.
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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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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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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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My Name Is Andrea
A cinematic evocation of key moments from the life of feminist outlaw Andrea Dworkin, maverick thinker and intellectual genius of the 20th Century. Through innovative use of archival footage and expressionistic dramatizations, the film pushes the creative boundaries of biographical documentary to challenge the current narratives on gendered violence.
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Anything You Lose
Realities of Assisted Reproduction test the strength of Eddie & Irina’s marriage, when the optimistic newlyweds set out to become new parents.
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Basketball Heaven
Basketball Heaven follows filmmaker Resita Cox as she journeys through time to her hometown, Kinston, NC: the largest producer of NBA talent in the world. Basketball Heaven is a poetic community portrait of the unsung heroes and rich history of this small, Southern Black town.
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The New York Love Songs
Millennial musicians journey from jazz school to adulthood as the aughts give way to a new digital frontier in this lyrical and intimate odyssey shot over 15 years.
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