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
Call Me Dancer
When a hip-hop dancer accidentally walks into a ballet class in Mumbai, his world opens up and a passion is born. The tough ballet master recognizes his talent and dares him to fulfill his dreams of dancing professionally - giving him the courage to defy family, culture and poverty.
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Firelighters: Fire Is Medicine
Our relationship with fire is out of balance, leading to catastrophic wildfires. FIRELIGHTERS follows Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa burning rights activists as they share their knowledge and provide solutions to this global problem.
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As Slow As Possible
From the unhurried movements of Icelandic glaciers to a 639 year-long musical performance in Germany, stories of geological, human, and cosmic time intersect in a cinematic exploration of time and timelessness.
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SEEDS
SEEDS is an ethnographic portrait of a centennial African-American farm in Thomasville, Georgia. Using lyrical black and white imagery this meditative film examines the decline of generational black farmers and the significance of owning land.
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Birds of War
The love story of London-based Lebanese journalist and Syrian activist/cameraman as told through thirteen years of personal archives across revolutions, war and exile.
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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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American Fall
A road trip through the U.S. in the fall of 2024 to discover what unites us.
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Listening to Whales
In 1971, Katy Payne and her husband Roger discovered that whales sing and changed how we see life on Earth. Listening to Whales follows Katy and Chris Clark, who Katy trained on the cliffs of Argentina, as breakthrough discoveries collide with a Navy sonar program killing the whales they love.
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None of This Matters
Struggling filmmaker Shaina Feinberg travels to Maine to interview trailblazing TV director and teacher Joan Darling. Over years of filming, Shaina uncovers Joan’s final storytelling wish and enlists her former mentees and collaborators to fulfill it, only to find the 90-year-old legend has a few plot twists of her own.
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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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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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Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bears Ville
Peter Valentine, living on disability in an apartment, fought MIT while they demolished his neighborhood to develop University Park, claiming he couldn’t leave because it was his electromagnetic laboratory. Eventually, MIT gifted him the entire building, moving it to another street. Peter was diagnosed schizophrenic and unmedicated all his life.
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The Feeling of Being Watched
When journalist Assia Boundaoui investigates rumors of surveillance in her Arab-American neighborhood in Chicago, she uncovers one of the largest FBI terrorism probes conducted before 9/11 and reveals its enduring impact on the community.
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Finding Your Laughter
Finding Your Laughter follows Chicago comedian Arlieta Hall who is learning to use her own resources—stand up comedy and improvisation—as tools for both her own mental health and to be a caregiver for her father who is fading from Alzheimer's disease.
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Barbara Forever
BARBARA FOREVER is an exclusive look at the iconic life, work, & legacy of pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, tracing her prolific canon alongside never-before-seen documentations of her life and body, to reveal Hammer's unconventional attempts to live on forever.
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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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Devi
Devi, a former guerrilla fighter who survived wartime rape, decides to fight for justice.
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The Road to Independence (Working Title)
Seeking to give a nuanced and humanized view of the Vietnam-American war and its complex reverberations, this documentary explores the perspective of Vietnamese youth and Communist veterans as they discuss the past and their dreams for Vietnam's future.
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