Silver-haired attorney Steven Wise has devoted his life to fighting for greater legal rights and protections for nonhuman animals. In late 2013, along with his colleagues in the Nonhuman Rights Project, he began filing lawsuits in New York State on behalf of captive chimpanzees. His audacious goal: to persuade the court to recognize these intelligent creatures not as property but as persons. In between teaching classes at Harvard Law School and appearing on The Colbert Report, he devotes his energies to setting up a history-making test case. Full Frame veterans Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker shadow the rumpled, indefatigable Wise on a series of fact-finding road trips—for instance, to a rural trailer park, where one of his “plaintiffs” passes his days locked in a dank cell watching TV. Moot court practice sessions foreshadow the dramatic courtroom footage at the end, where the fate of a species, and the future of American jurisprudence, hinges on a judge’s decisions.  MM