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08/07/2011 Documentary 1h 33m
68
User score

The world will be a different place once you've seen it through his eyes.

Overview

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.

  1. James Marsh

    Director

Top billed cast

  1. Bob Angelini

    Lab Tech

  2. Bern Cohen

    Dr. William Lemmon

  3. Reagan Leonard

    Stephanie LaFarge

  4. Nim Chimpsky

    Self (archive footage)

  5. Stephanie LaFarge

    Self

  6. Herbert Terrace

    Self

  7. Wer LaFarge

    Self (archive footage)

  8. Jenny Lee

    Self

  9. Laura-Ann Petitto

    Self

  10. View more

Full Cast & Crew

Reviews

A review by CinemaSerf
Written by CinemaSerf on 2025-06-05
Now I know that hindsight is a marvellous thing, but quite how anyone could ever have thought that playing God with another animate creature like this would ever be justifiable is beyond me. The scientists here may have been well meaning enough, but I don’t see how the writing on the wall could ever have been different for the chimp whom they called “Nim Chimpsky”. Wrested from his mother at birth, he is “adopted” like some sort of surrogate child by a group who are trying to prove that with a good deal of nurturing, they can teach him how to speak. They offer “Nim” all the trapp...read the rest
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Status
Released

Original Language
English

Budget
$0.00

Revenue
$0.00

Keywords