Living with Chimpanzees: Portrait of a Family

This is the story of an unusual nuclear family, Roberta and Philip and the two chimpanzees they adopted, Charlie and his half sister Casey. It shows the joys and challenges of life with our closest primate relatives. The film investigates the chimpanzees’ adaptive abilities when removed from their natural habitat, their amazing mental capabilities, and the bonding love that exists between chimpanzees and humans when they share intimate space.

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. They are also known to be intensely social creatures capable of close and enduring attachments. Most often they have been observed in the wild and in laboratories. What would happen if chimpanzees and humans were members of the same family?