A still from Nuisance Bear by Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Gabriela Osio Vanden.)

In 2021 Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman made a short about polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, which is known as the Polar Bear Capitol of the World. The remote and frigid area first caught the attention of the filmmakers in 2015 and their 2021 short has now become a 90-minute documentary. I remembered enjoying the short, and I enjoyed the 90-minute documentary version, as did the jury at Sundance, which proclaimed it the documentary winner on January 30th.

SOUND

The sound design by David Rose and the original music by Cristoabl Tapia de Veer helped the overall impact of the film, with Andres Landau editing film shot by six different cinematographers. Two of those shooting the bears up close and personal were the directors, but they were also aided by Michael Code, Jack Gawthrop, Samuel Holling and Ian Kerr, who got shots of the bears from unnervingly close range. (Code is also listed as one of the producers.)

Voice-over narration in the Inuit language is from Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, to whom the film is dedicated (1943-2025). The Indian narrator tells us, “This story about a bear is a story about us.” He goes on to say that no story is ever simple, but stories are like mazes. They lead us where we least expect to go.

TOURISM

Gabriela Osio Vanden, director of Nuisance Bear, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Gabriela Osio Vanden.)

This Inuit native of the area explains that the polar bears stay on land looking for food until the ice freezes. The longer they stay on land, the more powerful and dangerous the situation becomes for humans. A polar bear is described as “ a visitor from the past navigating the maze of the present.” We learn that polar bears are gradually losing their hearing because loud noises are frequently used to scare them away. We also are told that caribou have very poor eyesight. The tourists that are aboard the Lazy Bear Expeditions buses (I saw 8 full buses in one shot) are encouraged to wave their gloved hands in the air like antlers, as the caribou might even join them, thinking they are fellow caribou.

We see a bear trap (and watch a polar bear outwit the trap to succeed in eating the fish used as a lure) and learn that the southern town of Churchill is more welcoming to polar bears. They often trap them and relocate them to the wilderness—or what’s left of it— after tagging them. If you head further north, northern hunters live in fear of the bears. We hear one Inuit hunter say, to applause at a town hall meeting, that if a nuisance bear bothers him “I will put it down.”

DANGERS

Among other problems the bears pose, there are government regulations about hunting. Halloween night is  the night that has been given over to hunting for polar bears. One wonders if this is to protect the small ghosts and goblins out trick-or-treating. Indeed, one of my favorite images among so many gorgeous ones of the bears in nature was a shot of children in Halloween costumes, silhouetted  in  the headlights of an automobile on the night that the polar bear draw leads to the killing of a bear we saw being relocated to the wilderness, tagged, and left with a distinctive green paint mark. The northern hunters do not cater to tourists and prefer a more hard-line approach to controlling the bears.

TWIST

Jack Weisman, director of Nuisance Bear, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jack Weisman.)

Quite far into the documentary  we get a  surprise twist when the narrator says: “Not long ago, a man was attacked by a polar bear.  He sacrificed himself to save his children.  That man was my son.”

CONCLUSION

I liked “Nuisance Bear,” but it was not my favorite of the documentaries I saw this year.  However, it is worth mentioning that every single Oscar-nominated documentary for this year’s Oscar race came through Sundance (my favorite: “Mr. Nobody Against Putin”) and, in the past decade, six of the winners have been Sundance projects.