March of the Penguins (French: La Marche de l’empereur; literally The Emperor’s March) is a French nature documentary film which won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was directed and co-written by Luc Jacquet, and co-produced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society.
The film depicts the yearly journey of the emperor penguins of Antarctica. In autumn, all the penguins of breeding age (five years old and over) leave the ocean, their normal habitat, to walk inland to their ancestral breeding grounds. There, the penguins participate in a courtship that, if successful, results in the hatching of a chick. For the chick to survive, both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months.
It took one year for the two isolated cinematographers Laurent Chalet and Jérôme Maison to shoot the movie, which was filmed around the French scientific base of Dumont d’Urville in Adélie Land.
International versions
The original French language release features dialog “dubbed” as if it were spoken by the penguins themselves; the voice actors are Charles Berling, Romane Bohringer and Jules Sitruk. The Hungarian version follows that, with actors Ákos K?szegi, Anna Kubik, and Gábor Morvai.
The German version as seen in German movie theaters (and in the televised broadcast in April 2007 on channel ProSieben) uses the voices of Andrea Loewig, Thorsten Michaelis and Adrian Kilian for the “dubbed dialog” of the penguins. The Austrian channel ORF 1, however, used for their near-simultaneous broadcast in April 2007 the alternate version available on the German “Special Edition” DVD. This uses a documentary narration voiceover spoken by the German actor Sky Du Mont.
The English language release was given a more straightforward narration by American actor Morgan Freeman, as were the Dutch version (narrated by Belgian comedian Urbanus), the Indian version (narrated in Hindi and English by Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan and known by the title “Penguins: A Love Story”), the Polish version (narrated by Polish actor Marek Kondrat), and the Swedish version (narrated by Swedish actor Gösta Ekman).
The Tagalog version (also straightforward) is narrated by actress Sharon Cuneta; it was entitled Penguin, Penguin, Paano Ka Ginawa? (English: “Penguin, Penguin, How Were You Made?”) with the English title as the subtitle. The Tagalog title is similar to that of a Philippine novel and movie, Bata, Bata, Paano Ka Ginawa? (English: “Child, Child, How Were You Made?”)
The original version uses an original soundtrack by Émilie Simon, whereas the English language version replaces it with a score by Alex Wurman.
