March of the Penguins (aka La Marche de l'empereur) is a documentary film by Luc Jacquet.

The film depicts the yearly journeys of the Emperor Penguins of Antarctica. In the fall, all the penguins of breeding age (five years old and over) leave the ocean, their normal habitat, to walk inland to their ancestral breeding grounds. There, the penguins will participate in a courtship that, if successful, will result in the creation of new life. For the chick to survive, both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months.

It took one year to shoot the movie, around the French scientific base Dumont d'Urville in Adélie Land.

The English language release was narrated by American actor Morgan Freeman, the Dutch version by Urbain Servranckx. The French language release had narration "dubbed" as if it was spoken by the penguins by Charles Berling, Romane Bohringer and Jules Sitruk.

The Emperor Penguin's breeding ground has some advantages. It is on pack ice that is solid year round, so that there is no danger of the ice becoming too soft to support the colony, or chicks falling into the water before they develop a waterproof coat. It is in a protected area, which shields the colony from winds that can reach 300 km/h.

At the beginning of Antarctic summer, the breeding ground is only a few hundred meters away from the open water where the penguins can feed. However, by the end of summer, the breeding ground is over 100km away from the nearest open water, and predators like the leopard seal that prey on the young. Nevertheless, all the penguins of breeding age attempt to reach the breeding ground, walking most of the way, although occasionally sliding on their bellies.

The penguins are serially monogamous: monogamous within each year. This is functional: the female lays a single egg, and the cooperation of both parents is needed if the chick is to survive. After the female lays the egg, she must transfer it to the male without it touching the ground. If the egg is exposed for more than a few seconds, the intense cold will destroy it. The male must tend to the egg because the female must return to the sea, now even further away, both to feed herself and to obtain extra food for feeding her chick when she returns. She has not eaten in two months and by the time she leaves the hatching area, she will have lost a third of her body weight.

For an additional two months, the males huddle together with their precious egg and each other for warmth, never daring to drop it. They bear temperatures approaching -62°C (-80°F), and their only source of water is snow that falls on the breeding ground. When the chicks hatch, the males have only a small meal to feed them, and if the female does not return, they must abandon their chick and return to the sea to feed themselves. By the time they return, they have lost half their weight and have not eaten for four months.

The death of a chick is tragic, but it does allow the parents to return to the sea to feed for the rest of the breeding season. At times, the young are abandoned by one parent, and they must rely on the return of the other parent, who can recognize the chick only from its unique call. Many parents die on the trip, or at the hands of predators, dooming their chicks back at the breeding ground.

The parents must then tend to the chick for an additional four months, shuttling back and forth to the sea in order to provide food for their young. As spring progresses, the trip gets easier and easier, until finally the parents can leave the chicks to fend for themselves.

Originally released in France in January 2005, this documentary earned a 4-star rating from Allo Cine, and was beaten only by The Aviator during its opening week.

The original score, by Alex Wurman, was also a commercial success.

The film was released on DVD in France on July 26, 2005. Its extras address some of the criticisms the movie had attracted, most notably by reframing the film within its scientific context and adding facts to what would otherwise be just a family movie. This Zone 2 release featured no English audio tracks or subtitles.

When the film was released in North America on the May 19 2005 (the same day as Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the only other movie released that week), it drew praise from most critics who found it both informative and charming. The movie-going public apparently agreed with that assessment, as the film distinguished itself as one of the most successful films of the season on a per-theatre basis. It has received an admirable 95% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and become the second-most successful documentary released in North America, after Fahrenheit 9/11, grossing over $77 million in the United States and Canada.

The film has created some political and social anthromorphic commentary. Michael Medved praised the film for promoting conservative family values. This led to responses by others, including Andrew Sullivan, pointing out that penguins are not monogamous from year to year and (at least in captivity) have a tendency toward homosexual and bisexual behavior. Other commentators such as Matt Walker have pointed out that many penguin 'adoptions' of chicks are in fact kidnappings, that weak chicks are frequently the victims of infanticide, that alibino penguins are ostracised and attacked and that prostitution is practiced by at least one species of penguins (New Scientist, October 1, page 17). In a response to commentary that the penguins were proof of intelligent design, George Will commented, why would an intelligent designer have penguins raise chicks in minus 80 degree Fahrenheit temperatures? Many commentators including Matt Walker and Andrew Sullivan have concluded that trying to compare human behavior with animal behavior is a mistake.

Some of the controversy over this may be media driven. Rich Lowry of National Review reported that the BBC "have been harassing me for days over March of the Penguins. Apparently the film is just now coming to Britain. They are doing a piece on the 'controversy' over the film. I made the mistake of having one conversation with this—perfectly pleasant and polite, I should say—woman at the BBC about it, since I love the movie, but I have been showered with messages from her since then. Today she was calling about what, I'm not sure. I think to see if I would say on air that penguins are God's instruments to pull America back from the hell-fire, or something like that. As politely as I could I told her, 'Lady, they're just birds.'"