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
#WhileBlack
Witnesses who filmed the deaths of George Floyd, Philando Castile, and others, step forward in this ground-breaking documentary about the police brutality videos igniting global movements. Few realize how witnesses must battle online trolls, surveillance firms, and exploitative social media platforms turning their pain into profit.
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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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A Place of Absence
Decades after the disappearance of her uncle during Argentina’s dictatorship, filmmaker Marialuisa Ernst joins the Caravan of Mothers, a group of Central American women traveling the migrant trail in search of loved ones who have disappeared trying to reach the US.
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Gregory & Veronique: From Paris to Hollywood
Gregory & Veronique: From Paris to Hollywood is an intimate look at Gregory Peck’s legendary life and career, exploring his challenges and triumphs, and the impact that he and his wife Veronique made on Hollywood, told through personal archives: letters, home movies, and stories from those who knew them best.
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Most Dangerous Women: Women of the West
A documentary short featuring women changemakers working to create a more just world. In the film, contemporary leaders in the U.S. West reflect on the early legacy of visible women in the region, as well as the challenges they and their peers face today, and their hopes for the future.
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Grassland
Exploring the failures of the criminal justice system from a unique angle, GRASSLAND follows a young Latino boy who puts his single mother's illegal marijuana business at risk when he befriends the new neighbors.
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Coexistence, My Ass!
Noam Shuster Eliassi grew up the literal poster child for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process before making a hard pivot to stand-up comedy and political satire. But as the region sinks deeper into devastating violence, she must meet the moment by challenging people with hard truths that are no laughing matter.
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The Coma Club
THE COMA CLUB follows four matriarchs as their loved ones emerge from comas caused by injuries sustained during America's recent wars. Moving between an annual retreat and their lives back home, the film offers a rare, intimate portrait of caregiving and the resilience of families living in combat’s long shadow.
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This Year
Maxine, a precocious sixteen-year-old in Wheeling, West Virginia, feels safe and loved in the town she calls home. But as anti-trans policies threaten her healthcare, her mother pushes to leave, forcing the family to confront what home, safety, and belonging really mean.
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Home Court
HOME COURT traces the ascent of Ashley Chea, a basketball prodigy whose life intensifies amid recruitment, injury, and triumph throughout her high school years.
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Cancer: A Love Story (Working Title)
Cancer: A Love Story is an autobiographical documentary about my battle with cancer, confronting sexual assault, and the crazy things I did to heal myself. It’s a survival story, but also a story of mothers and daughters, and the intimacies of women’s bodies.
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Seeing Stars
In this genre bending solo musical film, a legally blind writer waits in her eye Doctor’s office suspecting her low but long stable vision may be changing. Fighting fear, she inhabits her own stories of women with limited sight and limitless vision, turning them into stars to light her way.
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MAILIN
Mailin tells her daughter a bedtime story, a metaphor unfolding the protagonists’ search to recover the memory of her past. Through a collage of archive and childhood drawings, emerges the story of a girl, who for 15 years suffered the abuses of a priest that Justice has just set free.
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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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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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I am Pippi
An expedition into the feminist icon, Pippi Longstocking, told through the people portraying her across the world.
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Tantura: UnEarthed (formerly Road to Tantura)
For nearly two decades, a Palestinian-American filmmaker follows the trail of her father’s silence into the heart of a buried coastal village—uncovering a contested massacre, a family’s exile, and the quiet machinery of historical erasure.
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