With an Original Score by Cristobal Tapia de Veer. A polar bear is forced to navigate a human world of tourists, wildlife officers, and hunters as its ancient migration collides with modern life. When a sacred predator is branded a nuisance, it becomes unclear who truly belongs in this shared landscape. Filmmakers Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman return to Churchill, Manitoba — affectionately known as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World” — to deepen the inquiry begun in their award-winning short film. The result is a striking portrait of the fraught coexistence between polar bears and humans, guided by an Inuit narrator whose insights resist simplification. The film traces this relationship with nuance, revealing how these arctic creatures deal with being constantly monitored, photographed, and redirected. There is a thrill in watching a polar bear outwit human efforts to contain it, underscoring the bears’ resilience and the fragility of the systems that attempt to control them. By challenging the conventions of a nature documentary and favoring confrontation over moralism, Nuisance Bear invites us to reconsider our assumptions about wildlife as spectacle. — AT Tags: Cristobal Tapia de Veer, Nuisance Bear, Sundance, Sundance 2026, U.S. Documentary Competition
