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
MAILIN
Mailin tells her daughter a bedtime story, a metaphor unfolding the protagonists’ search to recover the memory of her past. Through a collage of archive and childhood drawings, emerges the story of a girl, who for 15 years suffered the abuses of a priest that Justice has just set free.
Learn more
American Fall
A road trip through the U.S. in the fall of 2024 to discover what unites us.
Learn more
The Other Gaza
Gaza is a war zone. But it’s also the birthplace of Wafa Jamil, and the home of her family. The Other Gaza shows how daily life in Gaza really is, with sorrow and joy existing side-by side. For the audience to understand, as well as her young daughter Leia.
Learn more
As Prescribed
“Benzo warriors” fight a grassroots battle to save others from the devastating consequences of the little pill they took as prescribed.
Learn more
Olimpia
Olimpia Coral Melo, a victim of digital sex violence, creates a law that protects women in Mexico, even with her own wounds still open.
Learn more
Wittig, Yes!
More than 50 years ago, Monique Wittig, acclaimed writer, theorist, and lesbian feminist icon, dared to envision a world beyond gender. Told by her lifelong partner Sande Zeig, Wittig, Yes! unveils the synthesis of Wittig's public and private personas, tracing the origins of her groundbreaking theories.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
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.
Learn more
The Archives
The Archives tells the story of Holocaust archivists, quiet warriors who preserve and uncover the truth of history. Their domains are the archives, hallowed places of stored history that are the searching grounds for the victims’ descendants, family archivists excavating the trauma of the past to build a better future.
Learn more
Take Me Home
Anna, a 38 year old Korean adoptee with a cognitive disability, cares for her aging parents as the family struggles to find a fragile balance in meeting each others’ needs. When a Florida heat wave claims mom’s life, the routine is shattered leaving Anna’s future uncertain.
Learn more
The People Vs. Austerity/El Pueblo Vs. La Austerdad
Democracy was on the ballot in Puerto Rico in 2024's historic election, as workers, activists and journalists faced off against a corrupt government and an unelected Oversight Board. Just as in NYC and Detroit before, they fight to regain basic services and end the cycle of debt and austerity.
Learn more
House No.7
After escaping their conservative societies, three women, rent rooms in an old Damascene house in Damascus, Syria, where they manage to create a safe space isolated from the madness of the post-war era. But soon the girls start facing many threats, thus protecting their fragile space becomes a challenge.
Learn more
The Gender Project
What defines biological sex — science or society? Through immersion in the lives of people who defy simplistic gender labels, The Gender Project uses bold cinematic language to confront the dichotomy of gender, exploding binary myths with scientific, historical, and cultural revelations.
Learn more
Libertad (Working Title)
Alejandra, an Indigenous, transgender woman from Oaxaca, Mexico prepares to visit her hometown to reunite with her mother for the first time after 28 years in the United States. Alejandra's homecoming journey is explored through the multiple communities she identifies with as she calls for solidarity and mutual liberation.
Learn more
Postmortem
POSTMORTEM, a play about one woman’s reckoning with her past and a documentary about its staging, explores the healing power of the creative process.
Learn more
Vena Aquatica
In El Salvador women are the protectors of water and land, they are the veins circulating life throughout this Central American territory; VENA AQUATICA is a sacred journey that flows through a spectrum of the realities carried by communities at the forefront of ecocide and extractivism.
Learn more
Sleep Training
When a new parent’s postpartum depression devolves into frightening hallucinations, an escape from motherhood is necessary to stay sane –but is abandoning the baby the only way out?
Learn more
A Photographic Memory
A daughter attempts to piece together a portrait of her mother, a daring journalist, and a woman she never knew. Uncovering the vast archive Sheila Turner-Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers, the film explores memory, legacy and stories left untold.
Learn more