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
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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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.
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House No.7
After escaping their conservative societies, three women, rent rooms in an old Damascene house in Damascus, Syria, where they manage to create a safe space isolated from the madness of the post-war era. But soon the girls start facing many threats, thus protecting their fragile space becomes a challenge.
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Our Body Electric
OUR BODY ELECTRIC follows three elite women bodybuilders competing to be Ms. Olympia, the most coveted muscle show title. Offering a behind-the-scenes look at women sculpting themselves into anatomical works of art, this feature-length film is both a testament to the power of athletics and an intimate portrait of women defying societal expectations.
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The Source of Life (Te Puna Ora)
As the climate crisis threatens Tahiti, an alliance of women embarks on a sacred journey to protect their island home.
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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.
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Anne Sexton:
Tell Me Your Answer True
She loved life and yearned for death. Anne Sexton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, ‘one of the most important American poets of her generation’ was encouraged to write as an antidote to her open struggle with social convention, mental illness, and suicidal ideation. For the first time, a film follows the paths of this fascinating woman poet.
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Firelighters: Fire Is Medicine
Our relationship with fire is out of balance, leading to catastrophic wildfires. FIRELIGHTERS follows Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa burning rights activists as they share their knowledge and provide solutions to this global problem.
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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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First We Bombed New Mexico
75 years after the world's first nuclear bomb - codename Trinity - is secretly detonated in southern New Mexico, a Latina cancer survivor catalyzes a movement demanding justice for a legacy of lethal radiation.
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The Soldier's Journey
What does it take for Helena, a filmmaker to pick up a weapon in the most ruthless war the world has experienced since World War II and still try not to lose hope in humanity and the future?
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Flashing
How women around the world experience and address menopause - a critical and understudied realm of women's sexual health and reproduction.
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Index:Trace
Index:Trace is a film that portrays the past, present, and future impacts of the nuclear fuel trajectory in all 50 states, — uranium mines, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and nuclear waste — as told by impacted communities, scientists and activists who are working together for nuclear abolition and environmental justice.
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WOMEN OF STEEL
1980-1994: hundreds of migrant/working-class women campaigned for equality against BHP, the biggest and most powerful company in Australia. In WOMEN OF STEEL, these ordinary women tell their personal stories of how they beat a giant and changed the workplace rules for women and men throughout the country.
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The Milky Sea
A feature documentary film about the hunt for a rare glowing ocean phenomenon that has captivated mariners for centuries.
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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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Ana Mendieta: Rebel by Nature
An intimate look at artist, Ana Mendieta, whose exile from her homeland Cuba inspired her pioneering art in the landscape. Family and friends speak out after more than 30 years, interwoven with newly discovered audio of the artist alongside her visually captivating Super 8 films.
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We Are Volcanoes
Undisclosed project. Please contact filmmaking team for more information.
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