Award

The Werner Herzog Film Award 2026 goes to
Jack Weisman & Gabriela Osio Vanden for their film Nuisance Bear

The Werner Herzog Film Award, an annual award endowed with a sum of €5,000, can go to a feature film, a documentary, a filmmaker, an actor, or anyone working in the art of cinema. It will be given to special achievements in innovation, courage, and vision. The award is open to citizens of all countries. There is no application procedure, and no competition.

The Werner Herzog Foundation Award 2026 goes to

Jack Weisman & Gabriela Osio Vanden for their film Nuisance Bear

Werner Herzog on the bestowal of the award:

"The film centers on the annual polar bear incursions into towns of Churchill, Manitoba, and Arviat Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic. Regarded as unwanted neighbors, the bears are driven away while also having to contend with hordes of tourists, hunters, and wildlife conservation officers. They ultimately seek refuge at the town's landfill.

The story is interwoven with the personal tragedy of an Inuit Elder, who serves as the film's narrator in his native language, Inuktitut. It is not only the bears who pay the price for the profoundly troubled relationship between civilization and wildlife. The film also draws a parallel to the heavy price paid by the Indigenous Inuit for a settlement that exists solely to serve commercial interests.

The film presents an entirely new perspective without ever becoming didactic: Are we not, in fact, the true nuisance—the real intruders? NUISANCE BEAR is a courageous film: refreshingly youthful and truly groundbreaking. Through its beauty, its sorrow, and its profound insight, it reaches far beyond anything one would ordinarily expect from a wildlife film."

NUISANCE BEAR is a feature-length documentary directed by Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden. Depicting the complex relationship between polar bears and humans in Churchill, the film expands on their acclaimed short film of the same title (2022). It premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary.

Jack Weisman, an American-Canadian documentary filmmaker and cinematographer raised in Ithaca, New York, studied film in Toronto. Together with his partner, Gabriela Osio Vanden, a Venezuelan-Canadian filmmaker and cinematographer with a background in painting and dance, Weisman has created visually striking and original films. He is also a co-founder of Documist, an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning production company based in New York City and Toronto.

The award ceremony is going to take place on
Friday, December 18, 2026 at 7 pm
at the Munich Cinematheque (Filmmuseum München), St.-Jakobs-Platz 1

The ceremony is followed by the screening of the award winning film and a live discussion between Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden and Werner Herzog.

Limited ticket sales.