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
Traces of Brilliant Spirit
The country was occupied; revolution was brewing - three women’s lives converge as they step into history and ignite a movement. A century later, a Korean artist digs into the past, to uncover their forgotten stories and confront a nation’s legacy of silence.
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Darcelle
Until her passing in 2023, Darcelle XV was the World’s Oldest Performing Drag Queen. DARCELLE is the story of a single life. But it’s also the story of how tenacity and bravery in the face of unrelenting prejudice, changed lives and opportunities for generations to come.
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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 Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony
In a place where girls and sport rarely mix, THE GYMNASTS OF FISHERMAN COLONY is a coming-of-age documentary where joy, ambition, and quiet rebellion take root as three teenage girls carve out space for themselves, one somersault at a time.
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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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INDÍGENA
To fulfill her mother’s dying wish, a filmmaker retraces her mother’s work as an activist and journalist during the Red Power Movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, bringing to light 500 years of Taino resistance and igniting her own journey of reclamation.
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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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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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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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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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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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Extreme Animal Transport
What does it take to move wild animals across international borders? Every move has a story. We follow the journey to a new life.
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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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Emotions Revealed: The Life and Work of Dr. Paul Ekman
A personal portrait of the American psychologist whose groundbreaking scientific work investigating the facial expressions of human emotions silently permeates our modern world and the depths and significance of our humanity.
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Ask Joan
Ask Joan, follows the life and work of Joan Price, an 82-year-old sex-positive author and sex advice columnist, who is on a mission to help all seniors – but especially older women – fight society’s ageism to grab all the pleasure they can.
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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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Coming Home: Fight for a Legacy
A group of daring women challenge gender roles to become the first female military pilots during WWII, only to have their achievements buried by the lies of those who wished them to fail.
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