Would you raise a chimp as human?

I've just been informed about the new documentary from the award-winning director, James Marsh (Man On Wire). This is Project Nim, a film about a chimp. The film won the coveted World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary for the film at this year’s Sundance Film festival.

The film will have its UK premiere at this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest on 10th and 12th June and at the Edinburgh Film Fest on 18th and 20th June before coming to cinemas on 12th August.
I can't find a UK trailer so here's the US one...

From the Oscar and BAFTA winning filmmakers behind MAN ON WIRE, James Marsh and Simon Chinn, comes the story of Nim the chimpanzee. In the 1970s Nim 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 will open in cinemas across the UK Friday 12th August 2011