The Penguin Lessons

The Penguin Lessons is a 2024 comedy-drama film directed by Peter Cattaneo and starring Steve Coogan and Jonathan Pryce

The script was adapted by Jeff Pope from Tom Michell's 2015 memoir chronicling his experience as a British teacher who travelled to South America to teach at a boys' boarding school in Argentina in the 1970's. On a trip to Uruguay, he visited a beach in the Uruguayan resort of Punta del Este where he stumbled on many dead penguins soaked with oil. He noticed one penguin still alive, and so he decided to rescue it, bringing it to his hotel to clean and feed it. After that, the penguin would not leave him and kept following him; eventually he took it back to the school, where it became a popular pet.