The 2011 documentary by James Marsh about Nim Chimpsky is Project Nim.
The film recounts a 1970s Columbia University experiment led by psychologist Herbert S. Terrace, which investigated whether a chimpanzee could acquire language through American Sign Language. Born in 1973, Nim was removed from his mother as an infant and raised partly in a human household, where researchers hoped he would learn to communicate like a child.
Nim did learn and use many signs, but the project became controversial because researchers disagreed about what his signing demonstrated. Terrace concluded that Nim had not acquired human-like grammar or syntax, while critics argued that the experiment’s design and changing caregivers made its results difficult to interpret. The documentary also examines the ethical cost of treating a social, intelligent animal as a research subject.
Project Nim draws on Elizabeth Hess’s biography Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human. Nim later lived at Cleveland Amory’s Black Beauty Ranch in Texas and died of a heart attack on March 10, 2000, aged 26. Koko: A Talking Gorilla concerns a different animal and project.