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Project Nim

Project Nim

6,9 /10 (144 Votes)
2011 EN 93 min

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.

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Release date

08/07/2011

Votes

144

Popularity

0.4

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

Genres

Status

Released

Language

EN

Runtime

93 min

Original Soundtrack

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CinemaSerf

CinemaSerf

2025-06-05

⭐ 7

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 trappings of family…

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