My Penguin Friend

The movie is inspired by a true story.

Joāo (Pedro Urizzi) is a fisherman in Ilha Grande, off the coast of Brazil. He has a son, Miguel (Juan José Guernica), and it’s the day before Miguel’s birthday. Miguel’s friend Calista gives him a present and makes him promise not to open it until the party the following day. Calista goes home, and Miguel finds his dad, Joāo, who is back from fishing with Marcos and Luis. Miguel begs his dad to go fishing with him the next day, and Joāo replies with a maybe since Miguel has school. At home, Miguel’s mom, Maria (Amanda Magalhaes), is making guava sweets to sell at the next day’s market. Miguel begs to try one.

The following day, Miguel asks again, and Joāo relents. They go out in the fishing boat, but a storm hits, and even though Joāo tries to row back to the shore, Miguel falls off the boat and drowns.

Years later, a team of marine biologists are monitoring the penguin migration in Patagonia, Argentina.

As this migration is happening, we go back to Ilha Grande, where Calista (Thelma de Freitas) is now an adult with a little girl, Lucía (Duda Galvāo), Maria (Adriana Barraza) and Joāo (Jean Reno) are older and he no longer fishes. He’s bitter and sad and doesn’t even acknowledge his fishermen friends.  As he returns home, he finds a penguin covered in oil and tries to feed and clean him up. When Maria returns home from the market, she finds Joāo with the penguin and protests about the oil all over her kitchen. Joāo promises it’ll only be a few days until the penguin recovers, and he’ll release it back into the wild.

Joāo grows fond of the penguin, even making it a sweater of sorts, cutting up an old hat of Miguel’s. Eventually, Lucía shows up at the house and sees the penguin. She asks to talk to the penguin, Joāo says it’s shy, and Lucía ends up naming it DinDim. She accompanies Joāo to release it into the wild, but when Joāo walks home, he finds DinDim following him. Despite his attempts, DinDim is relentless and follows Joāo back home, where he stays.

Joāo goes for a walk in the village, and DinDim goes with him. The villagers are amazed, and Joāo retells how he found it. Eventually, DinDim leaves.

The marine biologists are once again monitoring the penguin colony and manage to catch a very friendly penguin—DinDim. They find this strange as he’s not afraid of humans. They tag him and his nest, which is covered in trash. They decide to leave the nest as it is because DinDim doesn’t seem to be eating it. 

Time passes, and DinDim returns to visit Joāo, to everyone’s surprise. Joāo notices the tag DinDim is now sporting. Upon another visit to the village, people capture DinDim on camera as well as Joāo explaining he’s not his pet but his friend, and the video goes viral online.

The video reaches the marine biologists in Patagonia and Adriana (Alexia Moyano), the team manager, decides to contact Paulo (Ravel Cabral), a reporter friend in Rio, to double check if the penguin in the viral video is one of theirs.

Paulo goes to see Joāo, who initially bristles at the idea of having DinDim’s tag checked, fearing Paulo will take him away, but Paulo and Maria reassure him, and he relents. However, he refuses to do a TV interview about the friendship and stresses DinDim comes and goes as he pleases.

In Patagonia, Adriana and Stephanie (Rochi Hernandez) realize it’s the same penguin they’ve dubbed “strange,” the very friendly one. As this is happening, Paulo returns with a TV crew to interview Joāo, who explains that DinDim has shown up in June and left in December for the last couple of years.

Adriana’s boss calls her up and tells her they’ve determined they want DinDim to live at the university with other penguins so they can study him. Adriana is against this, despite the offer of a grant to further their study, but she has no say and eventually has to capture DinDim to take him in… except she leaves the carrier unlocked, and when her colleague Carlos (Nicolás Francella) opens the trunk in order to get the carrier out as soon as he hands in the paperwork, DinDim escapes.

Everybody is waiting for DinDim in Ilha Grande at the usual time, but he doesn’t show up, much to everybody’s disappointment. Joāo has a dream of his son’s unfortunate demise, and when he wakes up, he finds Calista’s gift among DinDim’s things. 

Two weeks pass with no DinDim in sight. Everyone’s concerned and praying, so Joāo decides to recruit his fishermen friends to go out looking for DinDim. The initial search is fruitless, but Joāo convinces his friend Marco to go behind the island.

Joāo finds an exhausted DinDim floating there and rescues him, apologizing the whole time. DinDim comes to and eats some fish off Joāo’s hand.

There’s a party at Joāo’s, and Maria has once again made guava sweets. They all toast DinDim and accompany him to the beach to see him off.

A card appears with pictures of the actual Joāo and DinDim that states: “DinDim swam over five thousand miles between Argentina and Brazil to visit his friend João for eight consecutive years. It is not known why DinDim stopped visiting João. It is believed that he found a lifelong mate and started a family.”