EXCLUSIVE: Biotech entrepreneur Jonathan Lim’s recently launched production and financing entity City Hill Arts has unveiled the first still from The Penguin & The Fisherman — one of its first feature projects, starring 3x César Award nominee Jean Reno (Léon: The Professional), which has now wrapped production.

The film currently in post in Madrid is based on an incredible true story which went viral in 2016 — that of the lost and injured penguin, Din Dim, who finds love and family in another lost and wounded soul, João (Reno).

João is a Brazilian fisherman, guilt-ridden from a horrible tragedy which occurred as a young man, who lives a lonely existence, estranged from his wife and his friends — until the day he sees something bobbing in the waters off his beach. What João comes upon is a small Magellanic penguin, covered in oil and near death; very far away from his native Patagonia. He rehabilitates the tiny creature, and after a complete recovery, releases Din Dim back to the wild. Until the following year. The journey is thousands of miles, but Din Dim ventures back, turning up to see João and his wife, like clockwork, every year. F

ilmed primarily on the tropical beaches of Brazil, but also amongst a colony of nearly a million penguins in Patagonia, Argentina, The Penguin & The Fisherman is directed by David Schurmann (Little Secret) from a script by Kristen Lazarian and Paulina Lagudi Ulrich. Lim, Steven Wegner and Robin Jonas produced, with Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza (Babel) rounding out the cast alongside well-known Argentinian actors, Nicolás Francella, Alexia Moyano and Rocío Hernández.

View the first still from the pic, which will be taken out for sales at Cannes by City Hill Arts, below.