Alastair Fothergill & Jeff Wilson Interview: Polar Bear
Disneynature is ready to astound audiences once again with visions of the the cold Arctic in their new film Polar Bear, which premieres exclusively on Disney+ April 22. The directing team of Alastair Fothergill and Jeff Wilson, who previously made the world fall in love with Disneynature's Penguins, take their expertise to Svalbard and follow the path of a young mother polar bear and her cubs.
Family and parenthood are once again at the heart of the story, with the precocious mama bear (voiced by the extraordinary Catherine Keener, The Adam Project) looking back on her own childhood with her mother and brother. All along the way, she and the camera contemplate the devastating changes that have taken place in the Arctic in the last 15 years — and how those changes affect the mighty creatures of Polar Bear.
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Fothergill and Wilson spoke to Screen Rant about laying the groundwork for Polar Bear, adjusting the narrative by bits to suit the behaviors of the mother and her cubs, and the hopes they have for the change their work can engender in audiences.
Young parenthood seems to be a very strong theme, both in Penguins and now Polar Bear. What makes the highs and lows of parenthood a perfect documentary subject?
Jeff Wilson: I can speak from experience, being a young parent myself. But I think, for me crucially, young parenthood is a well of really good storylines, simply because you're dealing with one side of the offspring — of the child, as it were — that is learning about the world. And then you have an animal that already knows a lot about the world.
That transfer of information and behavior, both in animals and in humans, is an
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