True Story of Penguin’s Annual Return to See the Man Who Saved it From Oil Spill is Now a Feature Film (See Trailer)

Released to a delighted movie audience, My Pengiun Friend tells the story of a man and his long-lasting friendship with a Megallanic penguin.

But before the silver screen bore witness to the tale, it arose first on the news—in Brazil, where a retired stonemason named João Pereira de Souza discovered a penguin covered in oil from a recent spill on Proveta Beach in Rio de Janeiro state.

Taking the penguin home, João found the bird exhausted and depleted from his bout swimming through the oil spill. He nursed the penguin back to health, with plenty of soapy scrubbing and fish treats, naming it ‘Dindim’ after the toddler-speak of his son trying to say the Portuguese word for penguin (pinguim) when he was growing up.

After Dindim recovered his pomp, João released him on an island near Proveta Beach and went home; only to find that Dindim had followed him back, and remained on his lawn waiting to be let inside.

He finally left of his own accord in February of 2012. What happened then, and continued happening for years, is an annual visit following the fishing season where penguins remain at sea for months slurping squadrons of fish. Dindim would always come back to Proveta to see João, rather than travel off to a lovely summer island with his kin.

Every February he would leave, only to return in June—again and again for eight years.

Brazilian director David Schurmann embellished the story for My Pengiun Friend, at times going beyond the facts of the original story. (See the trailer below…)

“It’s lovely, lively, and guaranteed to get kids interested in the wild world around them,” writes Kate Erbland at the Indie Wire. “All the better if that also includes some outside research into what really happened with João and Dindim.”

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“I had to tell Jean Reno, a cinema legend, ‘Jean, the penguin is more important than you in this film’… he was incredibly respectful and understood,” Schurmann told the Guardian.

He tried to drop in an environmental angle with the utmost subtlety since he wanted the film primarily to “give people… a bit of relief and hope in this harsh world.” However it was the oil spill that started the story, and as director of the Voice of the Oceans Institute, an organization that combats marine pollution, Schurmann felt it needed to be highlighted.

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The film premiered this month to mostly positive reviews, including an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. Film critic Christy Lemire gave the film three out of four stars and wrote:

“There’s something radical about the old-fashioned approach of My Penguin Friend. It’s an earnest, crowd-pleasing family film – nothing snarky or self-referential, no on-the-nose needle drops – just a sweet, beautifully made movie that earns the emotion it’ll surely draw from its viewers.”

WATCH the trailer below… 

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