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
DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE
With innovative dark humor, DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE examines how the promise of an American multiracial democracy faces a renewed backlash, culminating in the very real fears of an actual authoritarian takeover.
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ithaka
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.
The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an father's fight to save his son.
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Love, Jamie
The story of Jamie Diaz, a trans artist incarcerated in Texas, and the enduring friendship that brought her art of pride and liberation to the outside world.
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Taking Venice
TAKING VENICE uncovers the true story behind rumors that the U.S. government and a team of high-placed insiders rigged the 1964 Venice Biennale – the Olympics of art – so their chosen artist, Robert Rauschenberg, could win the Grand Prize.
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SuperD!ville
We are creating a web series for public schools focusing on social and emotional learning for children with dyslexia and attention issues. Our mission is to help kids succeed in school and life because of, and not in spite of, their learning differences.
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Adios Amor - The Search for Maria Moreno
The discovery of lost photographs sparks the search for a hero that history forgot—Maria Moreno, a migrant mother who sacrificed everything but her twelve kids for farmworker justice. The first female farmworker in the U.S. hired as a union organizer, Maria’s story was silenced and her legacy buried—until now.
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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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How To Power A City
Citizens from all walks of life, fed up with government bureaucracies and Intransigent fossil fuel providers, fight to bring clean power to their cities and homes. Who will prevail — those seeking a cleaner future, or those with a death grip on the fossil fuel past?
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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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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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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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Ask Joan
Ask Joan, follows the life and work of Joan Price, an 80-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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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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256,000 Miles From Home
On July 1, 2019, four former unaccompanied child refugees, now between 83 and 92 years old, arrive in Vienna, Austria, to begin a trip retracing the route they took 80 years ago, as Kindertransport children, traveling alone, without parents, fleeing to save their lives.
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Bad Girl Marcia Tucker
After being fired from NYC's Whitney Museum for her radical exhibitions, feminist curator Marcia Tucker founded the New Museum in 1977 to champion marginalized artists. Through rare archive and insight from today's artworld rebels, BAD GIRL MARCIA TUCKER traces Marcia's defiant legacy – offering a blueprint for resistance in the face of contemporary threats to art, artists, and art institutions.
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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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THE COST
The truth about Alice Munro emerged only after her death. For her daughter Andrea, the story is not about legacy or outrage, but about what happens when everyone knows and nothing changes.
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Another Light on the Road: Robert Frank & June Leaf's Canadian Home
Two years after the passing of photographer Robert Frank, artist June Leaf returns to Nova Scotia to explore the special relationship they had to their adopted Canadian home of fifty years.
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