Project Nim was easily one of my favorite movies I saw at this year's Sundance Film Festival-- you can read my review here-- and will definitely be one of the best documentaries I see this year, if not best films in general. James Marsh's follow-up to his Oscar-winning Man on Wire is a stylish, thoroughly engaging look at one unconventional 1970s science project that had life-changing and sometimes devastating results for the humans and single chimp who participated in it. It's funny and nostalgic and also deeply disturbing, much in the way Marsh's previous film was but maybe with even more to say about humans and how capable we are of excellence and devastation in equal measure.
Project Nim is coming to theaters on July 8, and the film's first trailer has debuted at Apple.com. You can watch it there in HD or embedded below. It captures everything about documentary really well, from the fluid graphic style to the bizarre personalities of the people involved in the original project-- it even includes one of the film's best laugh lines, something a comedy trailer should never do but it's forgivable in the context of a documentary with so much else to offer. You don't want to miss this movie, and the trailer makes a great case for why not. Check it out below.
