Nuisance Bear Review: In Case You Forgot, Climate Change Sucks

In the northern corner of Manitoba lies Churchill, often called the "Polar Bear Capital of the World." Gabriela Oslo Vanden and Jack Weisman's Nuisance Bear documents the town's uneasy coexistence with polar bears as melting sea ice forces them to scavenge and travel further inland.

Expanded from the filmmakers' award-winning short, the feature is narrated by Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, an Inuit voice who outlines competing perspectives: Inuit hunters, who retain cultural hunting rights and treat bears as a real danger, and tourists who arrive to witness the animals.

The film emphasizes that polar bears are the largest land carnivores and can view humans as prey; Gibbons shares the sobering detail that he has lost family to an attack. Vanden and Weisman favor long, meditative shots—bears pawing at trash, outsmarting traps, and wildlife officers employing large noise deterrents or tranquilizing and airlifting animals back to the wild.

nuisance bear, polar bears, churchill, manitoba, climate change, sea ice, inuit hunters, gabriela vanden, jack weisman, wildlife officers