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
It's Not Who I Am
Women are going to jail and prison at rates that have increased by 700% since 1980, a rate 50% higher than men. When they are released, they have expectations of starting life anew, however, in their re-entry journey, they are often confronted with an unforgiving society.
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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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PERSIS
PERSIS is a documentary film exploring the legacy of the unheralded model-turned-actor Persis Khambatta.
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The Hammer
Disabling a military aircraft with a hammer is madness. Doing it twice is divine.
This film is a project of Documentary Australia and is sponsored by Women Make Movies as part of our ongoing partnership in support of independent filmmakers.
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Wikipediology
Wikipediology is a documentary YouTube series that uncovers the hidden stories behind Wikipedia’s most contested science pages -revealing the messy, human process by which we collectively decide what counts as truth.
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Rocky Flats
What happens when a massive nuclear weapons plant closes down in your neighborhood? ROCKY FLATS is the story of one community's fight in Colorado to uncover the truth about the toxic legacy of the Cold War in their backyards.
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A Double Life
The filmmaker goes on a journey of discovery to unravel the mystery of her uncle’s past as a civil rights activist lawyer and political fugitive and his alleged involvement in an alleged prison escape attempt which left six people dead, his 13 years as a political fugitive and his return in 1984 to stand trial and gain his acquittal in 1986, returning to his legal aid work after 15 years. The film presents a multi-layered portrait of a turbulent era and the role of one individual seeking justice for others and later for himself.
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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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Big Rock Burning
A gripping documentary exploring the resilient spirit of Malibu's Big Rock community as they rebuild from the ashes of the devastating Palisades Fire, one of America's worst wildfires.
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Good Fire
After more than one hundred years of fire suppression, Yurok people are returning Indigenous fire medicine to the land in order to heal the world.
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Hasta Siempre - Until Forever
Growing up in one of the most powerful nonviolent land-defense movements in the world, a young Indigenous girl, Estefanie, absorbs the struggle of her people to protect their territory in war-torn Colombia. As violence resurges and Estefanie witnesses the deaths of many of their leaders, her mom must teach her.
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Kokusekihou (working title)
A Japanese-born woman lost her Japanese citizenship after naturalizing in the United States. Stranded in Japan during the COVID-19 border closures, she finds herself living in legal limbo and launches a constitutional challenge against Japan’s nationality law and its single-citizenship principle.
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May It Be A Girl
MAY IT BE A GIRL is a film about the personal search for the identity of Kazakh women, who were named, according to an ancient tradition, by their parent’s wishes for them to be born as a son.
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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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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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4 AM (working title)
A New York artist’s desperate life is shattered and rebuilt in a raw, cinematic odyssey, fusing avant-garde dance, verité documentary, and magical realism into a pulsing testament to the city’s creative soul.
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Sitting Still
Artist, scholar, architect, landscape architect, professor, author, urban visionary, and unparalleled designer of cities, Laurie Olin is a true Renaissance man who, along with world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, takes us on a visual, eye-opening journey through natural and built environments, revealing the connective tissue for creating healthy and humane societies.
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GIVE IT A SHOT
GIVE IT A SHOT follows scientists in India and the U.S. developing a new male contraceptive that could revolutionize family planning and improve women’s lives globally.
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