Project Nim

Project Nim (2011) is a documentary by James Marsh you can watch online on iFILM. It follows Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee taken from his mother in the 1970s and raised as if he were a human child.

The experiment, run out of Columbia University, asked a bold question: teach an ape sign language inside a real family, and would he truly talk back? Nim passes from hand to hand — foster parents, labs, a string of researchers who each saw him differently. Marsh builds the story from archive footage and candid, often uncomfortable interviews with the people who lived it. The ending is best left unspoiled, but it does not flatter us.

Marsh made this right after Man on Wire, his Oscar-winning film about a high-wire walker, and the same cool eye is at work: no cooing, no easy verdicts, just the record. A tough, clear-eyed look at the line between animal and human, and how readily we cross it in the name of science. Stream Project Nim (2011) online on iFILM.