2026 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Winner
In the town of Churchill, Manitoba, a polar bear’s migration is transformed into a surreal spectacle of tourism, town safety protocols, and invasive human curiosity.
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. Set in Churchill, Manitoba — affectionately known as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World” — the result is a striking portrait of the fraught coexistence between polar bears and humans, guided by an Inuit narrator whose insights resist simplification.
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.
Michigan Premier
Get Your Tickets Now
