Synopsis
From the team behind Man on Wire comes 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. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is 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.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Bob AngeliniLab Tech
- Bern CohenDr. William Lemmon
- Reagan LeonardStephanie LaFarge
Recommendations
- 88
Orlando Sentinel
Here's a documentary so slick, novel, touching and outrageous that your first thought might be "This has to be fake." - 83
Entertainment Weekly
A fascinating and in many ways tragic documentary, takes us back to one of the high-water marks of the apes-are-people-too era. - 83
IndieWire
The movie works best when probing the nature of human interactions with Nim: He appears to form a close friendship with the stoner psych major Bob Ingersoll, not only foraging for food with him but also sharing joints. - 80
Boxoffice Magazine
British filmmaker James Marsh recreates this tale of an ambitious primate language study through traditional face-the-camera interviews, clever graphics and dramatic recreations. - 80
New York Magazine (Vulture)
You get a bad feeling early in Project Nim, the brilliant, traumatizing documentary by James Marsh (Man on Wire). - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
While this is fascinating material, it's the flawed human behavior it exposes that makes the story so compelling. And yet what elevates Marsh's film is the even-handedness of his perspective. - 80
Variety
A provocative and surprisingly emotional saga that ranges from wrenching to downright hilarious as it spans more than a quarter-century of unpredictable twists, "Nim" reaches far beyond mere scientific curiosity to become compelling human drama. - 80
Village Voice
Marsh's film remains a deeply haunting portrait of the unbridgeable gap between kindred species.
