James Marsh, the Oscar-winning director of 2008's Man on Wire, scintillated Sundance with his new documentary Project Nim, which centers on a chimp named Nim who was raised as a human child and taught American Sign Language. The first six minutes are now online, and if they're any indication, Nim's human preferences are enough to break a family apart. Watch, gape, and repeat.
The film already opened in Chicago and New York, but it's expanding to other cities through July. The quaint nature of the interviews and establishing shots seem like a prelude to a pretty insane evaluation of human and animal behavior, no? The breast-feeding scene was just as traumatizing as the one from The Grapes of Wrath, if you ask me.
Check out Michelle Orange's review of Project Nim here.
ยท Watch the First Six Minutes of 'Project Nim', by 'Man on Wire' Director James Marsh [Slashfilm]