Canadian filmmakers Jack Wiseman and Gabriella Osio Vanden knew they were on to something when their short film Nuisance Bear, an unconventional nature documentary centered around Manitoba’s annual polar bear migration, was picked up by New Yorker Studios and shortlisted for an Academy Award after its 2021 Toronto Film Festival premiere.
But while the 14-minute featurette was conceived as a “proof of concept” for a feature-length documentary, neither filmmaker could predict its future success, with A24’s now-defunct documentary division serving as producer, and the feature “Annoying Bears” winning the grand prize for U.S. documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
“The whole time it was like a wide-eyed dream. I couldn’t believe it all happened,” Wiseman told Variety. The film is currently seeking distribution in the United States and will have its international premiere at Thessaloniki International Airport. The documentary festival will run from March 5th to 15th.
Shot between Churchill, Manitoba, which bills itself as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World,” and the Arctic hamlet of Arviat, a predominantly Inuit community on the Hudson Bay coast, “Trouble Bear” follows the growing tensions as polar bears are increasingly forced out of their natural habitat. The film opens with scenes of tourists flocking to witness these magnificent creatures during their annual migration, but also documents the lives of the indigenous communities who coexist dangerously with them.
The film’s title comes from the Inuit word “abinnaarjuk,” which refers to a brazen bear who has grown accustomed to humans invading its homeland, and who plays mischief while roaming through populated areas. Musing on everything from colonialism and climate change to ecotourism and urban development, Wiseman and Oshio Vanden subvert traditional notions of the nature documentary while capturing intimate and often riveting footage of polar bears in the wild.
“Nuisance Bear” is an A24 presentation produced by Ninmah Foundation, Documist’s Denovo Initiative, and Rise Films. Producers: Michael Cord, Will N. Miller, Teddy Leifer. The film includes music by Cristóbal Tapia de Veer of “The White Lotus” and is narrated by the late Mike T’nalak Gibbons, a respected elder in the Inuit community of Arbiat, who passed away a few weeks before the film’s release.
Variety interviewed two filmmakers who also got married in Park City ahead of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
“Junk Bear” has been a 10-year journey for you. How did it all start?
Gabriela Osio Vanden: It was very interesting with a lot of different interests. In 2015, Jack and I went out (to Churchill) for the first time. It is a tourist destination. We didn’t necessarily want to be wildlife photographers. We were both interested in filmmaking because of our artistic sensibilities, but we also love animals and nature and grew up watching a lot of BBC shows.
Since we start out as filmmakers and work in the documentary field, we have to think a lot about what it means to point the camera, what we point it at, and how we point it. At Churchill, we started asking questions. And I met people who started asking, “Have you heard of Arviat?” So, over time, we slowly started to think it was really interesting that there was this completely different community.
Jack Wiseman: That’s it here.
Osio Vanden: It’s very close, but at the same time it’s a world away. And they have a completely different feel and approach to ecotourism. Also, a lot of the environmental films we watched felt very didactic, about what’s right and what’s wrong. And we had no interest in building anything like that.
Wiseman: And neither did our participants. The people appearing in the film agreed to participate in the content of the film. They did not agree to put words into their mouths or point fingers at others. It’s a very sensitive subject. There’s a lot of politics involved, and there’s a lot of money involved. We wanted to be as neutral as possible, which gave us very unique access to the situation.
The short story ends with a memorable scene of polar bears being flown in from Churchill, and it feels like the long story begins from there. Was that your plan from the beginning?
Osio Vanden: Regarding this short story, at the time we were trying to make this feature in our heads, but no one was supporting us. I couldn’t even afford to shoot a short in Arviat. We didn’t have anything, so we invested our time and energy and provided our own equipment to do this proof of concept. But we actually thought we were filming for this final feature.
It was only when we put the footage together and showed it to respected filmmakers that they said, “This is a movie!” We weren’t conscious of it at the time. Fortunately, the movie did well, premiered at TIFF, New Yorkers were interested, and we had this kind of snowball effect.
We always had the idea of (shooting in) both communities —
Wiseman: And then you airlift the bear, and you track the bear from one vantage point to another. It seemed like a great way to market (the feature).
Logistically, this feature must have been a huge challenge. Can you talk a little bit about your actual experience making this film?
Wiseman: It was definitely complicated. One of the themes of this film is about respect, so it was very important to us to minimize our impact on the environment and especially the bears. This means shooting from as far away as possible using the longest lens you can afford. In our case, it’s a 50-1000mm lens, which is like a 20-pound lens that requires this huge stabilizer.
The filmmakers built a specialized rig to shoot from a safe distance.
Provided by Gabriela Oslo Vanden
Using designs from other wildlife filmmakers, we worked with our partners to create a vehicle that could safely film bears from inside a truck. We could never put ourselves at risk. We can’t put the bears at risk. We were able to move with them and get really dynamic shots. But we didn’t chase them. We knew the route they would take. It took years to learn the patterns and these different locations, and use thermal and infrared cameras to detect when they enter an area, so that when they do, all you have to do is get close. This is really rare.
How was the filming done?
Wiseman: It’s an eight-week migration in the fall in October and November, so we plan our year around that eight-week window. We were both from two different communities where we primarily filmed, so I was directing in Arviat and Gabi was directing in Churchill. We really had to be aligned on a lot of things, and sometimes we weren’t. We fought about it—
Osio Vanden: Telephone. It was great because it was like, “I’m here and you’re over there, so I can’t do anything.”
We collected hundreds of hours of footage over several years. How much did the film evolve during that period, whether it was in response to events on set, something clicked, or angles you hadn’t considered before?
Osio Vanden: We had the idea that bears do the same thing every year. But what we had to do was really explore our particular human character. We started by casting a wide net, at least within Churchill. There’s a lot of stuff we filmed, and a lot of it can be seen in the editing. But with Mike (Tunarak Gibbons) it was different.
Wiseman: We were really looking for the characters and following a lot of clues. And I think in the back of our minds, Mike was always there. Because when we first started researching this movie, the tone of Arviat was really shifting around the death of Mike’s son (from a polar bear attack). We made this short story in part because of his death, but also because we didn’t feel like we were the right people to tell this story, or because it was too sensitive. We knew that out of respect for the family, we needed to reach out to the family and let them know that we were going to make this film and give them the opportunity to reject us. And I think (if we had) we would have packed our bags.
The road to meeting Mike was a long one. We’ve known him for years and thought he would be a great fit for this film, but we never had a chance to ask and didn’t really know what we were doing. So we held a community screening. Hundreds of people at Arviat came to see the short and ask questions about its features. It was truly unanimously supported.
But there were still doubts that needed to be overcome.
Wiseman: Unfortunately, there are real tensions between environmental groups and Inuit hunters, so we had to make it clear that we’re not part of Greenpeace or any advocacy group, and we’re not here to make Inuit look bad. There’s understandable resistance to a filmmaker coming in and telling a story about climate change killing bears, and the Inuit being unhappy with this metaphor. This film was very focused on hearing Arbiato’s side of this story, which has been told so often through Churchill’s lens. Once Mike and the community understand that, it’s like an open embrace in a way and it’s one of the most beautiful experiences.
You’ve said that the film isn’t a “traditional nature documentary.” What does that mean to you?
Oshio Vanden: One of our producers, Michael Cord, is from both communities and is an incredible Indigenous filmmaker. We were already interested in this line of sight idea. But through my conversation with him, he brought up a very good point: when many filmmakers go out into the “wild”, they are guided by the indigenous people of the area to find the animals. This whole concept of nature untouched by humans is a colonial construct. Because the government needed the idea in Manifest Destiny that these areas were uninhabited. It is not true that animals exist in a vacuum of nature, unaffected by human activities. That was really important to us.
Nuisance Bear won the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival.
Documentary Festival Presented by Thessaloniki International Airport
I think a big reason why this film wasn’t a traditional nature film was that it didn’t have a director like a major production company would have. We had our own budget. We didn’t have the usual budget for this kind of filmmaking. Much of our equipment was donated. It was very vulgar, and I don’t think it necessarily seemed that way, but it was a very independent film. That gave us a more nuanced perspective. I think we all have a responsibility when we live in these places to think about the history of where we are and how we got there.
Wiseman: All complications aside. As humans, we tend to think of ourselves as the center of the universe. For me, I was curious to see how a story centered around bears would feel. I don’t think we can really know what a bear is thinking or feeling. It’s kind of a big mystery, and I don’t think the movie will ever figure it out. It might not be satisfying for some viewers, but I see a lot in it. It’s a canvas. If you give people a chance to speak like this, I think they will listen if they listen.
Thessaloniki Documentary Festival will be held from March 5th to 15th.
