March of the Penguins (2005)

As its tagline says, “In the harshest place on Earth, love finds a way,” the documentary March of the Penguins (also known as Marche de l'empereur, La in France; and The Enperor’s Journey for its international title) tells a truly remarkable journey of Emperor penguin’s passions for love and life.

Emperor penguins clamber onto the frozen ice and begin their journey. They head for their traditional breeding ground where the ice has to be solid enough for not falling into the water before the baby being independent enough for their own lives. When the penguins march to the ground, guided by the radiance of the Southern Cross, they pair off into monogamous couples. The females are exhausted after laying a single egg without gaining nourishment for weeks, and begin their journey again back to the sea. During about two months period for the females go and return to the ice-field from the sea, the male emperors guard the hatch the eggs, which they cradle at all time on top of their feet.

The males eat nothing, and the chicks can only survive from the limited food the males reserved until the females return. They find each other by sound, as the filmmaker says. Then the roles reverse. The exhausted and starved males are able to head back to the sea for the food. The arduous journey was repeated countless times. The adult penguins march back and forth many hundreds of miles away between the sea and their breeding ground until their baby are ready to take their own lives-- diving into the sea, the deep blue water of Antarctic.

This lovely and beautiful film makes me wonder how the single penguins find their mates; how they can recognize each other by sound; do the return female penguins who lose their chicks feed some chicks who lose their mothers; and why the adult penguins don’t aggressively protect the chicks when the petrels attempt to attack the chicks. The answers will be interesting to find.
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To view the trailer:
CineMovies - French trailer
Warner Independent Film - USA trailer

Warner Bros Official Site (http://wip.warnerbros.com/marchofthepenguins/)