How ‘The Penguin Lessons’ Director Captured Human Emotions From the Bird — and What Footage Landed on the Editing Room Floor

variety.com:

Rosemary Rossi Who knew that combining a sweet story about an adorable penguin and one about the atrocities of a political uprising in 1976 Argentina could have such charm? “The Penguin Lessons” does just that, thanks to the balancing act of director Peter Cattaneo — and the Magellanic penguins playing Juan Salvador (the bird is named after Jonathan Livingston Seagull).

After Cattaneo was given the script by one of the producers, he went back to its source material, a memoir of the same name by Tom Michell, which was a tale of the unexpected bond between man and penguin in the setting of a British private school in Buenos Aires. “I thought, ‘Wow, you would never come up with this out of thin air if you were told to come up with some ideas for movies,” Cattaneo tells Variety. “I was really intrigued by the tonal challenge of balancing the penguin story, the school story, the inner journey of Tom Michell within the context of the school and the wider political context of what’s going on in Argentina.

It just felt like there’s a lot to get your teeth into.” Set against the backdrop of Argentina’s political turmoil, it illuminates the brutal inhumanities carried out by the military dictatorship at the time.

But getting the tonal balance just right of the poignant story of Tom’s experience with the penguin and respecting the historical context of the Argentinian coup was tricky — and it was the main focus of conversations throughout making the movie. “The key was to find the right balance, showing the tragic impact of the regime on two of our supporting characters, whilst keeping the story of Tom’s redemption and awakening at the center of the narrative,” Cattaneo explains. “I was quite interested to make was a film where,.