Working Films provides funding, training, impact campaign support, and programming opportunities for documentary filmmakers, with a priority on serving underrepresented artists. Check out our programs serving filmmakers below!
Organizing
Providing finishing funds to makers of short documentaries and offering early impact strategy for filmmakers, with a special focus on serving filmmakers of color and other underrepresented artists.
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For a documentary film to make a difference, a solid strategy for audience engagement and strong partnerships are key. Impact Kickstart is a program offering in-kind partnership and strategy development to underrepresented documentary directors with feature films in progress that…
How can film screenings become the welcoming spaces organizers need: places where people feel invited in, and leave feeling like they belong? In this conversation, Working Films’ Director of Campaigns and Strategy, Andy Myers, chats with Daniel Solorzano with Amanecer in El Paso, Texas and Warren Tidwell with Alabama Center for Rural Organizing and Systemic Solutions (ACROSS) about what it takes to create spaces that break down barriers, dissolve left/right binaries, and give more people a sense of ownership in our movements. These two organizers were part of the 2025…
Cucalorus Film Foundation, Working Films and DAWG are excited to announce the 2026 Works-in-Progress Lab Cohort! The WiP Lab is an immersive laboratory supporting social justice documentaries with a focus on Black storytelling. The program fosters a tight-knit community of peer support, where facilitators and mentors guide filmmakers in providing constructive feedback on each other’s works-in-progress. This year's mentors are filmmakers and WiP Lab alumni: Natalie Bullock Brown and Byron Hurt. The 2026 WiP Lab cohort will come together next week at the Cucalorus Campus in Wilmington, NC. Congratulations to the filmmakers! Alex J. Bledsoe OAKLEAD OAKLEAD, her debut…
May Day is coming up! For those of us raised on a lifetime of apolitical Labor Days in the US celebrated in early September, it may come as a surprise that International Workers Day, actually falls on May 1st, a.k.a. May Day. It traces its origin to the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago, where police clashed with workers striking for the eight-hour workday. Since then, May Day has been adopted worldwide as a celebration for the struggle for workers’ rights. Despite its roots in Chicago, the US government deliberately avoided…
Impact Kickstart supports underrepresented filmmakers create strategic goals for impact and specific plans to engage future partners, funders, and audiences in meaningful ways.
DAWG catalyzes and cultivates a culture of care and accountability within the field of nonfiction filmmaking.
A regional collective of arts organizations, film festivals, and media makers working to strengthen the independent sector across the greater South, with a focus on equity and sustainability.
