It’s a hard mountain to climb when your last film is currently the best reviewed film of all-time. After his excellent documentary Man on Wire, director James Marsh has decided to explore the life of chimps (one in particular) with Project Nim. The subtext of human nature itself runs throughout the film as you can see below. We weren’t terribly fond of it at Sundance (read our full review here), but the film is now hitting theaters this summer and we have the first trailer. Check it out below via Apple, along with the poster.
Synopsis:
From the Oscar-winning 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.
Project Nim hits theaters July 8th, 2011.