VIFF -- Review: Nuisance Bear

Seeing the world from the polar bear's eyes

Nuisance Bear (2026)

Before the film started, two of the cinematographers gave a quick speech, and one of them described the film as being from the point of view of the polar bear, while the other said the documentary was "David Attenborough on acid," to which we laughed.

But directors Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weiseman's Nuisance Bear is not a laughing matter. Set mostly in Churchill, Manitoba, the audience first sees special vehicles taking tourists to see polar bears, and the guides explain many facts about them. It's much like a safari where they search for the giant white beasts for photographs.

The polar bear appears in Churchill, Manitoba

Then we see a nameless polar bear wanders by himself, encroaching on human territory, looking for food. 

People specialised in keeping the polar bears away will blare sounds at high volumes at him, or fire shots near him to get him to go away. At one point they try to trap him, luring him with fresh meat, but he manages to escape incarceration.

However, he's starving, the ice not quite cold enough for him to go elsewhere to look for food.

It gets so drastic to the point where he is tranquillised and carried by helicopter to another place, and is even marked with green paint.

Meanwhile, the Inuit community of Arviat is looking forward to the annual hunting of polar bears; they are careful to draw only a few names from a lottery system to kill one bear each and share the meat. One of the winners, a woman, spots the nuisance bear, but sees he has green paint on him and lets him go.

He manages to avoid being trapped

It's so sad to see this bear wandering around on his own, but he needs to be watched. Towards the end of the documentary, it is explained that if the mother bear dies when then cubs are young, they are left to fend for themselves and are untrained in survival skills. As a result they are unpredictable and can be very aggressive.

There is constant tension between the polar bear and humans. Who has the right to be there? and you can't help but feel empathetic for the polar bear, and wonder if he is still alive.

It's quite an extraordinary film in terms of the challenges in filming the polar bear in sub zero temperatures in a barren land, and draws on themes of climate change, conservation, tourism, and co-existence, just from this one bear. Not surprising it won the Grand Jury Prize: U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance earlier this year.

Nuisance Bear

Directed by Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman

90 minutes