Mike Nichols’s DAY OF THE DOLPHIN imagines a world where the boundary between human and animal intelligence begins to dissolve. When a team of researchers successfully teaches dolphins to communicate in English, their breakthrough attracts the attention of powerful forces eager to weaponize the discovery.

The film draws direct inspiration from the pioneering work of Dr. John C. Lilly, whose real-life research into dolphin intelligence and communication captivated both the scientific community and the public imagination in the 1960s and ’70s. Lilly believed that dolphins possessed complex language and consciousness, and his experiments attempted to bridge the gap between species.

Released at the height of that cultural fascination, DAY OF THE DOLPHIN transforms Lilly’s radical ideas into a tense political thriller about the ethics of science, the limits of communication, and what might happen if we finally succeeded in speaking with another intelligent species. Presented alongside JOHN LILLY AND THE EARTH COINCIDENCE CONTROL OFFICE, the film offers a fascinating glimpse into how Lilly’s extraordinary research rippled into popular culture.