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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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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*holds you tight*
A lonely night watchman develops a relationship with an AI chatbot, transforming his worldview and challenging his perception of identity and reality.
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The Mask That Grins And Lies
The Mask that Grins and Lies is a meditative documentary feature that uncovers the intergenerational silence shrouding black women’s mental illness.
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Into The Underworld
On a remote Indonesian island, a female-led underwater cave diving team joins forces with local scientists on an expedition to locate a desperately needed drinking water source for indigenous villages, and to protect their ancestral waters from encroaching threats of mining and climate change.
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Hollywood Does Abortion
HOLLYWOOD DOES ABORTION reveals how depictions of abortion in film and television have both reflected and distorted this safe but controversial medical procedure. Exploring how abortion came into our living rooms and psyches, we see how these stories helped shape public discourse and today’s seismic shift in abortion access.
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HOW MUCH AM I WORTH?
Upon moving to New York, freelancer and amputee Rachel Handler is saddled with insurance that says “1 prosthetic device per lifetime.” Determined to get a prosthesis without going bankrupt, she embarks on a quest to repeal this policy and unexpectedly becomes an advocate for people with disabilities along the way.
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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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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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Coach Emily
Emily Taylor, a Black woman and rock climbing coach in Oakland, CA, battles systemic racism in her professional and personal life as she strives to empower her students, all young girls of color, and connect them to the outdoors.
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Being Olimpia
After creating a groundbreaking law against cyberviolence, Olimpia wages an internal battle to heal her wounds and reclaim her name.
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On Three Wheels
On Three Wheels follows Brooklyn based, Puerto Rican bike shop owner Sandra as she risks it all for her dream of giving every wheelchair bound child an adaptive bicycle- taking them from four wheels to three- while bearing witness to the stark realities of families raising children with disabilities.
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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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A Mother Apart (formerly MITM)
A Mother Apart (formerly MITM) 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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How to Build a Library
Two tenacious Kenyan women are transforming a dilapidated, junk-filled library in downtown Nairobi. But first they must work with local government, raise several million dollars for the rebuild, and confront the ghosts of a problematic colonial history still trapped within the library walls.
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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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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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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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