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
Hear, Eat, Home
A lyric portrait of how—through art, friendship, music, and food—New York immigrant musicians and artists understand the upheavals they faced in their home countries and answer new challenges that emerge as they make the US their home.
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I Brought You Into This World
"I Brought You Into This World" is an intimate, character-driven documentary following three pregnant Black individuals of varying gender identities as they navigate pregnancy in a post-Roe America. The film exposes the profound impact of political and social conditions on maternal healthcare, revealing deep racial and gender disparities.
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Sleep Training
When a new parent’s postpartum depression devolves into frightening hallucinations, an escape from motherhood is necessary to stay sane –but is abandoning the baby the only way out?
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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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Bad Girl Marcia Tucker
Marcia Tucker, the first woman curator at the Whitney Museum, was fired for challenging the artworld establishment. Undeterred, she founded the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 1977 as a platform for marginalized artists. For the first time through film, BAD GIRL MARCIA TUCKER unearths her trailblazing story to reveal how her feminism and idealism can continue to inspire us.
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Razing Liberty Square
Razing Liberty Square is a feature documentary about the development, decline and redevelopment of Liberty Square, Miami, the oldest segregated public housing community in the history of the United States. Best known as setting for the Oscar-winning movie Moonlight.
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Holloway
Six women return to the abandoned Holloway Prison to participate in a women’s circle. Sharing some of the most intimate experiences of their lives, they unravel what led each of them to prison, building an eye-opening portrait of repeatedly failing systems, and discovering their extraordinary capacity to heal through sisterhood.
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Standing Above the Clouds
When the massive Thirty Meter Telescope is proposed to be built on Mauna Kea, an uprising of kiaʻi (protectors) in Hawaiʻi and around the world dedicate their lives to protecting the sacred mountain from destruction. Through the lens of mothers and daughters in three Native Hawaiian families, Standing Above the Clouds explores intergenerational healing and the impacts of safeguarding cultural traditions.
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Familiar Touch
Familiar Touch is a coming of (old) age film. It follows an octogenarian woman’s transition to life in assisted living as she contends with her conflicting desires and self-narratives amidst her shifting age identity and memory.
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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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Sundays at Café Tabac
Step into the electrifying realm of radical glamour, where Sundays at Café Tabac immortalizes the iconic lesbian night that lit up New York’s East Village from 1993 to 1995. A vibrant celebration of diversity and unapologetic self-expression, this unforgettable gathering not only transformed lives but also mirrored the surge of visibility that sent shockwaves through mainstream media—during a time when being seen was a matter of survival.
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The Island in Me
Homecoming follows two women Johnny Frisbie and Amelia Borofsky who, after decades away, return to their beloved childhood atoll of Pukapuka in the South Pacific. The film reveals a unique story of love, survival and indigenous resiliency in the midst of rising tides and migration.
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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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Fencing for the Edge
FENCING FOR THE EDGE follows the emotional and physical journeys of two girls’ teams as they compete in the world’s largest high school fencing league.
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Mothering in the Movement
Mothering in the Movement is part mother-daughter buddy film, part investigative saga that follows Brooklyn's most outspoken poet-activist Staceyann Chin, as she navigates being a mom while discovering the truth about her own mother who abandoned her as an infant.
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The Road to Independence (Working Title)
Seeking to give a nuanced and humanized view of the Vietnam-American war and its complex reverberations, this documentary explores the perspective of Vietnamese youth and Communist veterans as they discuss the past and their dreams for Vietnam's future.
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Own It! Louis Kelso’s Macroeconomic Fix
Does capitalism work better if workers own capital? Lawyer Louis Kelso gave USA the opportunity to find out.
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