Film co-produced by Yukoner wins Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival

A documentary about a polar bear co-produced by Yukoner Mike Code has taken home a top prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Nuisance Bear won the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary competition, the festival announced Friday morning.

“We had no idea this was going to happen,” Code said after the announcement Friday.

“It was like, ‘What?!’ … We were, like, quite enthralled by the award.”

The film is a fictionalized journey of a single polar bear as it navigates through challenges in the Arctic, mainly human-bear interactions, Code told CBC’s Midday Cafe in an interview on Jan. 20.

It looks at what the bear means to two different communities: Churchill, Man. and Arviat, Nunavut. 

“It’s … not a compare and contrast,” Code said.

“But kind of like looking at the nuances of each community and how they deal with the same issue, which is basically bears coming into town.”

Code lived in both Churchill and Arviat growing up and saw a lot of polar bears, he said.

His father was a teacher in Arviat and a wildlife cinematographer and bear guide in Churchill. 

Code met the soon-to-be directors of Nuisance Bear, Jack Wiseman and Gabriela Osio Vanden, at the Hot Docs film festival in 2019, he said. 

Shooting for the feature started in Churchill in 2023.

“We, like, car-mounted these … cameras with the … equivalent of like 2,400-millimetre lens, which is like ultra-stabilized,” he said.

“I think it uses, like, some military technology to keep it perfectly stable even though you’re driving along on a bumpy road. That enabled us to get really tight shots of bears and moving shots and also to be in the safety of a vehicle.”

Code said the filmmakers knew they had a special film on their hands because they shot things never before seen on film.

People at the festival told him the film “blew their minds” both visually and because of the story, he said after the victory.

Being at Sundance is a recognition that a filmmaker has produced something of a high calibre, Code said before heading out to the event.

It’s also a great opportunity to meet fellow filmmakers and to highlight the project.  

“If we win a competition, it kind of goes into the pile with the, you know, the Oscar nominations as well,” Code said at the time.