Project Nim

The story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. If successful, the consequences of the project would be profound, forever breaking down the barrier between man and his closest animal relative and fundamentally redefining what it is to be human. Combining the testimony of all the key participants, newly discovered archive film and dramatic imagery, this is the picaresque story of one chimpanzee’s extraordinary journey through human society and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way. Filmmaker James Marsh has directed an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature – and indeed our own – is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.