The most immediate thought is the most salient: how are we getting this close? The imagery of Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden’s documentary “Nuisance Bear” is startling, if only because the bear of its title (and many more of his brethren) are rendered so immediately visible, so present, so vivid that anyone with even the loosest grasp on human and animal interactions will have to wonder, at first, how? And then, at what cost?
That’s the central conflict of both the film itself and its making: how were the filmmakers able to get so close to various polar bears that we’re able to identify their individual teeth, and at what cost? As plain-faced as those queries are, as baked-in as they are from the film’s very first shots, they are not answered within the film’s slim 89-minute running time.
Instead, other — just as vital — questions are raised in place of real answers, all of these queries interlocked, none resolved, and many building to a kind of slow-speed panic. The basis of Weisman and Osio Vanden’s film (itself expanded from their short film of the same name) is compelling, loosely chronicling a Canadian community known as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World” and some of the ursines that make their way there throughout the year.
But while the film includes many sequences following humans as they attempt to chase off the hundreds of bears who arrive each year (from bear traps to bear jail, whizzing fireworks and nightly patrols), waiting for the Hudson Bay to freeze over so they can venture forth on to the sea ice (well, for as long as that lasts), the film is less preoccupied with those machinations and more with what they mean in a larger context. That interest is compelling, but the actual execution is lacking. Documentaries should inherently spark questions and debate, but “Nuisance Bear” too often throws out a buzzword or heady topic and abandons it.
Mostly, the film is about changing ways of life — those ways foisted and forced upon unsuspecting and innocent communities of both bears and people — and the butterfly effect that naturally (or, in some cases, unnaturally) follows. Which is why it’s unfortunate that the film, so able to get us so very close to nature (and, it should be noted, the film is visually stunning because of that), keeps some of its human subjects at a remove.
Narrated by Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, a native of the Inuit community of Arviat, a small town where many of the bears converge, “Nuisance Bear” clearly has deep access and strong ties to the community, but they feel at a distance. Tunalaaq Gibbons’ interviews that give some shape to the film eventually give way to something of a twist, an emotional gut-punch that feels out of place within the rest of the doc. And while we go into the homes of some of the other inhabitants of Arviat, we rarely even learn their names.
Still, they are all part of one larger circle of life, and the ways in which they are pushed together under challenging circumstances (really, can you imagine what it would be like for a single polar bear, let alone many, to stroll through the center of your town?) make for captivating watching. We just wish that circle was tightened up a bit more, focused more on the forced intimacy and its obvious and immediate concerns, pulled into a sharper focus. The imagery is startling. The story needs to hit even harder.
Grade: B-
“Nuisance Bear” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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