The Emperor's Journey begins by describing the often arduous mating ritual of the Emperor penguin - a trip that's wrought with danger but based on an act of love. The same could be said of director Luc Jacquet's frozen journey from the vast Antarctic to the red carpet with his directorial debut and first feature film, which has gone on to become the second-highest grossing documentary, behind Fahrenheit 9/11.
Jacquet's first foray into the Antarctic began when, aged 24, he answered a student job-board posting for a nature photographer to go 'to the ends of the world'. Although he didn't know how to work a camera, the behavioural scientist with a Masters degree from Lyon University did a 10-day crash course on 35mm cameras - and got the job.
'I went the first time as a scientist,' says Jacquet of the Antarctic. But he emerged as a storyteller, impelled to show others the sparse magnificence he found there. Thirteen years later, he's still roaming the South Pole.
Jacquet and his crew spent more than a year braving the Antarctic's ice storms and treacherous terrain, in order to capture the Emperor penguins' curious mating ritual.
Every winter, thousands of the penguins, which can grow up to 1.2m tall and weigh 40kg, leave the sea to waddle inland, slowly and in single file, to their traditional breeding grounds. Like bottom-heavy penitents, their heads bowed against the 240km/h winds, they march more than 110km in temperatures of minus 56 degrees Celsius, to mate and lay a single egg where the ice is thickest.
Once the egg is laid, a delicate dance is played out in passing it from mother to father. He prevents it from freezing, and loses a third of his weight in the two months he goes without eating while the mother heads back to the sea to get food for their young. Many thousands don't make it - nor do many eggs or chicks.
Cinema has often had a misguided and comedic romance with the penguin. With its jaunty, side-to-side gait, the penguin seems naturally comic. From Wallace & Gromit's Tennessee Tuxedo, to, most recently, the stealthy birds of Madagascar, the penguin may seem a hard-sell as a romantic lead.