Nuisance Bear – Films – Visions du Réel

Gabriela Osio Vanden & Jack Weisman
United States, United Kingdom, Canada | 2026 | 86 min
Swiss Premiere
Languages : Inuktitut, English
Subtitles : English, French

In the autumn, hundreds of bears migrate north, passing through Churchill and attracting hordes of tourists to the “polar bear capital of the world”. Through the story of an old Inuit sage marked by personal tragedy, Nuisance Bear adopts the viewpoint of these “undesirable” neighbours whose path brings them into conflict with modern life.

We all know the story of “the man who saw the man who saw the bear”. But in Churchill, on the shores of Hudson Bay, the bears have become a real tourist attraction. Huge vehicles carry visitors with telephoto lenses trained on the polar bears as they wait for the sea ice to form so they can migrate further north. But with climate change, the now starving bears linger nearby, and wildlife protection officers deploy traps, firecrackers and helicopters to keep these unwelcome neighbours at a distance. Adopting the viewpoint of one of the bears and following its journey through a landscape shaped by human activity all the way to the neighbouring Nunavut, Nuisance Bear is narrated in voice-over by an Inuk, whose community is finding it increasingly challenging to live alongside these once rare and sacred predators. Behind the immersive odyssey of a polar bear, Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman suggest that this new chapter is unfolding as part of an older conflict that pits the Western world against Indigenous peoples striving to preserve their culture, partially destroyed by colonisation.

Emmanuel Chicon

Gabriela Osio Vanden
Nuisance Bear, 2026
Nuisance Bear, 2022
The Rambler, 2016

Jack Weisman
Nuisance Bear, 2026
Nuisance Bear, 2022