Following the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) attorneys as they visit animal sanctuaries and humans who privately hold apes in captivity. NhRP argues that elephants, apes and cetaceans have human-like capacities that warrant similar legal status as a five-year old human being in the USA. The legal precedents don't exist in the US, but Sikh holy books in India, a river in New Zealand, and other non-human entities have received person-hood status elsewhere. For many years in the US, corporations and some legal partnerships have received the status of person-hood, but no general rules exist for fetuses and non-human animals. The NhRP team led by Steven M. Wise try to change that during the course of two years tracked in this motion picture.