Two things occur at the beginning of “Nuisance Bear” that catch our hearts and curiosity. There’s an undeniably adorable shot of a mother polar bear and her two cubs lying on the snowy ground. It’s striking in its peacefulness and its incredibly up-close proximity. The other thing we don’t just see but also hear is the voice of Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, who speaks to us in his beautiful Eastern Canadian Inuktitut dialect, his soulful, weathered face conveying endless stories. The elder patiently tells us, “I’ve never told this story before. It may seem like a simple story, but no story is ever a simple story.” From those two things, I was hooked and anticipated what kind of story the directors Gabriela Oso Vanden and Jack Weisman would share in their curiously titled documentary.

“Nuisance Bear” is far from your typical nature documentary because it isn’t about nature, but rather the fraught cohabitation between humans and indigenous animals, in this case, polar bears. In particular, the bears of Churchill, Manitoba, a place deemed the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”, a location that has become a shared landscape with humans despite the bears’ ancestors migrating along the shores of Canada’s Hudson Bay for thousands of years. Inevitably, bears and humans must contend with each other, but how to go about doing that has become, at times, problematic. This isn’t a documentary about extinction or global warming, although that may loom in the back of your mind while watching, but it’s more concerned with observing life in this place.

Gibbons, with his sage-like voice, serves as our narrator, while Osio Vanden and Weisman, who also handle cinematography, show us the arctic landscape where people and bears try to coexist. He shares how bears and humans were once considered equals, both powerful and dangerous, and how, for generations, “we lived in a world where we kept our distance from each other. That world no longer exists.” Clearly, the area has been impacted by capitalism, colonialism, and tourism over the years. Watching polar bears wander through waste heaps or a backyard in Churchill, as well as through more populated streets, brings to mind the brown bears caught on camera walking down the main tourist drag in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which always makes me think, “They were here first.”

Churchill has managed to live with these polar bear sightings by boosting tourism and by staying vigilant year-round. There’s Lazy Bear Expeditions, which offer group tours in large Arctic Crawlers, allowing camera-equipped passengers to get up close and personal. Tour guides encourage silence, stating loud noises are not good for polar bears. In fact, loud noises, like flares and fireworks, are used by The Polar Bear Alert Program to chase the bears away from populated areas in Churchill. Some bears have become too used to people, as Gibbons notes: “The longer the bear spends in the human world, it loses its fear.” As a result, they require bait-and-trap approaches, and some even need tranquilizers and helicopter relocations. Education is important as well, as we see rangers teaching young children about polar bear safety. All of this is captured by Osio Vanden and Weisman as observers; their cameras are simply visitors following human and bear activity, without talking heads, allowing viewers to be immersed in the environment.

We learn that there’s an Inuit name for the type of bear that has grown accustomed to humans, “Avinnaarjuk”, or in Churchill, they’re called “Nusiance Bears”. Typically, these are young bears on their own, learning to fend for themselves until the ice freezes, when the bear stays on land looking for food. The problem arises when the ice doesn’t form the way it used to, leaving the bear on land longer. The longer they are on land, the more dangerous they become.

“Nuisance Bear” doesn’t just stay in Churchill, as the directors travel to the next northern town, Arviat, Nunavut, which is where our wise narrator/storyteller is from. He shares about his town, “There was never a town here before white people arrived. I was born on the land. There were no outsiders then, just Inuit. When I was young, outsiders arrived, and we had to change our way of life.” He continues to share how the outsiders started to control their lives, setting up residential schools to separate children from their families, “We would get ten straps with the ruler for speaking our language in class. When you’re yelled at over and over, you become numb to what’s being said.” Sadly, this sounds very familiar to what happened to other native americans as colonizing whites infiltrated their land.

Yes, bears can be dangerous and unpredictable. Unfortunately, humans can be dangerous as well, and entirely too predictable. “Nuisance Bear” reminds us of this, but also leaves us asking ourselves, “Who’s the nuisance?”

It becomes obvious that the use of Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons as a narrator and storyteller throughout the documentary is invaluable, and the directors clearly saw the value in keeping his voice as an important tether to the past. We hear a revelation from Gibbons at the end of the film, which makes his involvement all the more valuable.

Osio Vanden and Weisman have spent many years making this documentary, an expansion of their 2011 14-minute short film of the same name. Their approach is respectful and artful, with a knowledge that simply capturing such resilient life is worthy in and of itself. Canadian and Chilean composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer (“Smile 2” and “Babygirl”) provided the score for the documentary, which often employs electronic and synth-pop elements that add a contemplative, surreal quality.

“Nuisance Bear” was picked up by A24 before making its world premiere in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize Documentary. It was also reported that Weisman proposed to Oso Vanden on Main Street in Park City while at Sundance, making their festival experience all the more memorable.

RATING: ***