Each winter a truly remarkable journey takes place as it has done for millennia, emperor penguins in their thousands abandon the deep blue security of their ocean home and begin the long journey into a region so bleak, so extreme, it supports no other wildlife at this time of year. Guided by instinct, they head unerringly for their traditional breeding ground where they will pair off into monogamous couples and mate.

Filmed entirely on location in Antarctica and narrated with sensitivity and grace by Morgan Freeman, this film captures a full year of life, death, and love as the penguins make their annual trek to their ancestral breeding grounds where they will mate, hatch chicks, and jointly raise their offspring.

Focusing on one couple in particular, as they trek across the Antarctic on a journey that invokes just about every major life experience: from birth to death, from dating to mating, from comedy to tragedy, and from love to fighting for survival.

It's impossible to watch the thousands of emperor penguins huddled together against the icy Antarctic blasts in Luc Jacquet's documentary film without feeling a tug of anthropomorphic kinship... it conveys an intimate sense of the life of the emperor penguin. - New York Times