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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Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bears Ville
Peter Valentine, diagnosed schizophrenic and unmedicated all his life, fought MIT while they demolished his neighborhood to create a new development- University Park. After 7 years in court with MIT, they gifted Peter the apartment building he lived in, moving it to another street.
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Pyramid Club - The Movie
NYC Drag queens, punks, and rebels weave a collective story of the culturally influential gem of a nightclub, the 1980s Pyramid Cocktail lounge. Theirs is a story of pushing limits, creativity, love, grief and survival, in a place where everyone belongs, in a city that is all but abandoned.
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Recovery City
Recovery City is an intimate, unflinching portrait of four bold women who refuse to let themselves or their community give in to the stigma and despair of addiction.
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Little Sallie Walker
How did generations of Black women and girls across America, including the film's director, find themselves fighting for joy and healing? LITTLE SALLIE WALKER, an intimate documentary, explores how their precious worlds of play collide with a unique set of traumas and struggles from both the past and present.
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Exit Here
Exit Here embeds with one London funeral home guiding bereaved families through grief, and the terminally ill through their last days, as they plan final farewells. Interweaving stories of love and loss that build to bespoke celebrations of life, this honest exploration of death shows us how to live.
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The Martha Mitchell Effect
She was once as famous as Jackie O. And then she tried to take down a President. Martha Mitchell was the unlikeliest of whistleblowers: a Republican cabinet wife who was discredited by the Nixon Administration in 1972 to keep her quiet. Until now.
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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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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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Being BeBe | The BeBe Zahara Benet Documentary
An ambitious immigrant from homophobic Cameroon struggles to build a successful career as a drag performer in the US after winning the First Season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
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#WhileBlack
Witnesses who filmed the deaths of George Floyd, Philando Castile, and others, step forward in this ground-breaking documentary about the police brutality videos igniting global movements. Few realize how witnesses must battle online trolls, surveillance firms, and exploitative social media platforms turning their pain into profit.
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Sitting Still
Artist, scholar, architect, landscape architect, professor, author, urban visionary, and unparalleled designer of cities, Laurie Olin is a true Renaissance man who, along with world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, takes us on a visual, eye-opening journey through natural and built environments, revealing the connective tissue for creating healthy and humane societies.
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Rocky Flats
What happens when a massive nuclear weapons plant closes down in your neighborhood? ROCKY FLATS is the story of one community's fight in Colorado to uncover the truth about the toxic legacy of the Cold War in their backyards.
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Big Fight in Little Chinatown
All across the globe, Chinatowns are under threat of disappearing – and along with them, the rich history of communities who fought from the margins for a place to belong. Big Fight in Little Chinatown documents the collective fight to save Chinatowns across North America.
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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.
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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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Dépôt-Vente
After moving to a new country for love, a filmmaker creates a loving portrait of a Beirut thrift shop that embodies the spirit of her home in Lebanon.
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Big Rock Burning
A gripping documentary exploring the resilient spirit of Malibu's Big Rock community as they rebuild from the ashes of the devastating Palisades Fire, one of America's worst wildfires.
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