In Nuisance Bear, the stunning follow-up to their acclaimed, award-winning short documentary of the same title, Toronto-based co-directors and cinematographers Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman examine the relationship between polar bears and humans. Nowhere on Earth do polar bears have such a prolific relationship with humans as in Churchill, Manitoba – the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”, where the bears bring flocks of tourists. Following the bears through Churchill, Nuisance Bear plays out like a thriller, as they dodges curious visitors and wildlife officers working to relocate them away from town.

But for the polar bears, life around Churchill is only part of the story – the film also traces the bears’ ancient migratory patterns and their relationship with the Inuit. The film moves more expansively into the polar bears’ life on the sea ice and their long history alongside the Inuit of Arviat – a stark contrast to the bears’ heavily intruded-upon existence in Churchill.

Nuisance Bear is narrated in Inuktitut by respected elder Mike Tunalaaq Gibbons, who was born and raised in Arviat. Grounded in Gibbons’ patient and revealing narration, and featuring some of the most striking polar bear cinematography recently captured, the film turns the traditional nature documentary on its head, questioning what coexistence really means. An incredible score from award-winning composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer (The White Lotus, Smile) ties it all together.

Planet in Focus is proud to present the Toronto premiere of Nuisance Bear, which premiered at Sundance, where it won the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize. Nuisance Bear recently picked up the prestigious 2026 Werner Herzog Film Award, the William W. Warner Voice of Nature Award at the DC Environmental Film Festival, and Best Production Addressing Human Rights Issues at Millennium Docs Against Gravity.

As grocery prices climb across the country, Inuk filmmaker Malaya Qaunirq Chapman turns the camera on this crisis through an Inuit lens, following the Ugyuk family of Taloyoak, a community in Nunavut. Inuit communities face some of the steepest food costs in Canada, and as a result, many households confront serious food insecurity. Nirilaurta: Let Us Eat digs into the particular shape this cost-of-living crisis takes in Inuit territory, where it also makes it harder to harvest country food from the land. Getting out on the land for a hunt requires specialized gear, fuel and equipment – much of which has grown financially out of reach for families.

Chapman offers a tender portrait of a community holding together despite these pressures, following the family through everyday moments at home over shared meals and out on the land hunting and fishing. The film threads archival material alongside its present-day footage, linking Inuit history to contemporary life and pointing toward intergenerational, land-based knowledge as a path back to food sovereignty.

Planet In Focus is proud to present the Ontario premiere of Nirilaurta: Let Us Eat, which had its world premiere at the Présence Autochtone International First Peoples Festival in Montreal, and screened at the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax.

For one remarkable year, a captive-born owl became one of New York City’s most unlikely celebrities. In Wild Inside, director Penny Lane follows Flaco, a male Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo into the city in 2023 and captivated New Yorkers and, eventually, audiences around the world.

Lane traces the extraordinary bond that formed between the owl and those watching from below as Flaco learned to navigate Manhattan with no experience of life in the wild. But beneath the affection and fascination lie provocative questions about power, captivity, and what freedom looks like when the boundaries between wild and domesticated, captive and free, begin to blur. Who, exactly, is captive?

With warmth, wit, and curiosity, Lane transforms an extraordinary true story into a meditation on freedom, captivity, and our complicated relationship with the natural world.

In Colombia’s La Guajira desert, three Wayuu people bravely confront a version of progress that has left their communities behind. A reservoir intended to bring clean water instead supplies a massive mine, while wind-energy projects promoted as a greener future are transforming ancestral territory. For Tita, Misael, and Jazmine, the stakes are deeply personal: water, land, culture, and the right to remain.

Director Alejandro Valbuena brings their stories together against a stark and beautiful landscape, tracing the costs of projects that promise a better future while asking Indigenous communities to bear the consequences. What does “green” mean when the transition itself depends on taking land and resources from those who have lived there for generations?

With intimate testimony and a fierce sense of place, Valbuena has created a portrait of resistance: people determined to stay.

Planet in Focus is proud to present the Ontario premiere of The Wind’s Thirst, after its recent world premiere at Sheffield DocFest.

What happens when we start to look at forests as complex habitats shared by many forms of life? In In the Forest, Québec director Pascale Ferland travels through forests across the province, beautifully capturing elusive and majestic animals and flora, alongside scientists, Indigenous voices, and forestry workers who offer different ways of seeing a landscape that is at once habitat, resource, workplace, and home.

Ferland observes these encounters with artistry and curiosity, allowing contradictions to emerge. Animals move through these spaces alongside the people reshaping them, creating a shifting portrait of our complicated relationship with the more-than-human world.

Combining striking observational footage with a dreamlike sensibility, this documentary essay invites us to slow down and consider what we stand to lose as the forests around us change.

Planet in Focus is proud to present the Ontario premiere of In the Forest.

The Lake is an urgent documentary following a group of scientists and political insiders working to prevent the ecological collapse of Utah’s rapidly drying Great Salt Lake, long recognized as the largest natural saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere. This unique, ecologically fragile lake has been rapidly drying due to rising temperatures and overconsumption, exposing a lakebed laced with arsenic and other toxic minerals that now blow across the surrounding landscape.

Peabody- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Abby Ellis, a native of Utah, directs the film in a verite style, capturing the tireless efforts of microbiologist Bonnie Baxter, ecologist Ben Abbott, atmospheric sciences professor Kevin Perry, and Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed. The film tracks their work to build public awareness and move political leadership before time runs out. Ellis leans into her subjects’ contradictions: Abbott is a devout Mormon unwavering in both his faith and his role as a scientist, opening up a more inclusive dialogue between religion, science and climate change. Steed, meanwhile, works to bring in local farmers and community members across different backgrounds and political affiliations, turning ecological catastrophe into a bipartisan cause. The takeaway runs bigger than the fate of the Great Salt Lake itself – Ellis is ultimately making a case for unity, for people setting differences aside to confront environmental crises together.

Planet in Focus is proud to present the Canadian premiere of The Lake, which premiered at Sundance, where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Impact for Change. It features a high-profile team of executive producers – Leonardo DiCaprio, Jimmy Chin, and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the Oscar-winning directors of the 2018 documentary Free Solo.