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
SORORITY STORY
SORORITY STORY tells the unexamined story of racial discrimination in one of the largest and most exclusive private clubs in America: white college sororities.
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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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Hyde Park
Bound by a legacy of toxic soil and systemic neglect, three families in a historic Black neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia, wage a decades-long battle against seven industrial giants to survive. Through their unrelenting pursuit and activism, they navigate a grueling seven-year relocation to reclaim the health and dignity they deserve.
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TURBULENCE
How do we overcome the heartbreaks, sorrows and traumas we endure or witness, and come out whole?
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Life After
A gripping personal investigation that exposes the tangled web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying. Disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport uncovers shocking abuses of power as he amplifies the voices of the disability community and raises the alarm about the "right to die."
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Counted
"Counted" exposes the horrifying experience that incarcerated pregnant women endure and follows the advocates, doulas, and doctors on a mission to end prison birth.
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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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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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Hear, Eat, Home
A lyric portrait of how—through art, friendship, music, and food—New York immigrant musicians and artists understand the upheavals they faced in their home countries and answer new challenges that emerge as they make the US their home.
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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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Blind AF
A blind female Paralympic champion and world-record holder sets out to become the first blind person to ride a single, non-tandem, bike across the US, while confronting painful truths about her past that she’s spent a lifetime trying to outrun. Blind AF is about trauma, transcendence and power of self-belief.
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The Dead Zone
Every day, half a million forgotten Americans languish in THE DEAD ZONE, the limbo between arrest and conviction. Innocent people die in jail and can be held for years because of the profit motivated pretrial detention system. But four extraordinary people are trying to offer a blueprint for change.
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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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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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the bomb
the bomb is a critically acclaimed immersive film, music, and art installation that puts viewers in the center of the story of nuclear weapons. It explores their immense power, their perverse allure, and the inherent danger at the very heart of them. An installation version of the bomb is currently touring museums, galleries, film festivals, and academic institutions.
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Paper City
Paper City tells the story of three survivors of the 1945 fire-bombing of Tokyo as they launch one final campaign to leave behind a record of this forgotten tragedy—before the last of them passes away.
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