A wily polar bear offers one of the year’s most enigmatic and intriguing characters in Nuisance Bear. MUBI released the first trailer today for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner from directors Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman. The acclaimed documentary expands upon the duo’s Oscar-shortlisted short film of the same name and transports audiences to Churchill, Manitoba where some polar bears waltz into town when climate change forces unexpected detours in their migration patterns.
Ursine follies ensue as the sightings inspire a new tourist economy and flocks of gawking shutterbugs descend upon the northern town as well. In the feature, Osio Vanden and Weisman connect the bears’ plight with those of the local Inuit population and the history of displacement—and erasure—that threatened their own survival. The doc adds voiceover narration by Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons as the story brings the bear up to Arviat, expanding the scope for a provocative fable about the interconnected fates of humans and non-human animals in a land facing seismic shifts amid a global crisis.
“Nuisance Bear dexterously intertwines social and historical factors shaping the way of life for animals and humans up north. Gibbons’ narration introduces the history of residential schools in Canada quite seamlessly and explores the violence wrought against his culture and language,” I wrote in POV’s review from Sundance. “Gibbons’ story notes the tragic consequences that he’s personally experienced thanks to the arrival of outsiders who changed his way of life and, in turn, that of his children and grandchildren, but it inspires him to find more respect for the bear that wanders in around the community. As the film observes various residents of Arviat embark on a polar bear hunt of their own and their path intersects with the air-lifted bear’s lonely trek across the frozen land, the film finds a poignant kinship between the northern residents and the animals with whom they share they Earth.”
Following its Sundance premiere, Nuisance Bear ran the festival circuit to great acclaim, including landing a champion in fellow grizzly man Werner Herzog, as Osio Vanden and Weisman won the 2026 Werner Herzog Foundation Award. The prize recognizes “special achievements in innovation, courage, and vision.” In his statement for the award, Herzog called Nuisance Bear “a courageous film: refreshingly youthful and truly groundbreaking. Through its beauty, its sorrow, and its profound insight, it reaches far beyond anything one would ordinarily expect from a wildlife film.”
Nuisance Bear has its Toronto premiere on October 20 as the opening night film of Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival. It then screens at the Windsor International Film Festival and serves as November’s Doc Soup pick at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. The film opens in select Canadian theatres on Dec. 4 and streams on MUBI afterwards.
