Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog's documentary examines the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, an American who spent a number of summers living among grizzly bears in a remote Alaskan national park, believing he had formed a bond with the animals. Treadwell, a former waiter, occasional actor and recovering alcoholic, filmed much of his time in the wild himself, and in October 2003 he and his companion Amie Huguenard were killed by a bear. Herzog builds the film around that footage, alongside interviews with people who knew Treadwell, including a close friend, a pilot and an ecologist, and narration spoken by the director himself, asking what drew a modern man to abandon ordinary life for the company of one of the planet's most dangerous predators.

The film was released in August 2005 and runs 103 minutes. Herzog wrote the screenplay as well as directing, and Erik Nelson produced for Lions Gate Films, Discovery Docs and Real Big Production. It sits twelfth in chronological order among the twenty-two features Herzog has directed, arriving after Invincible and before Rescue Dawn. Reception was strong across the board. On IMDb the film holds 7.7 from roughly 67,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.5 from about 992 votes, while its critics' rating stands at 8.3 from 147 reviews, a figure noticeably above the audience scores.