A British teacher (Tom Michel) takes a job at a boys’ boarding school just before the coup d’état in Argentina in 1976. This is the first premise of The Penguin Lessons, which is out on Netflix and is based on a true story. When there is a bombing nearby, the school closes for a week, and Tom takes the bus to a beach town in Uruguay. He tries to impress a woman he meets there by taking her for a walk on the beach. They rescue a penguin from an oil spill. She names the penguin Juan Salvador and promptly abandons them both. Tom ends up taking Juan Salvador back to the boarding school with him.
Tom is cynical and hard-hearted. At first, he doesn’t have sympathy for the penguin or his students. But he softens over the course of the film and eventually makes himself vulnerable.
There’s just something about that little penguin. Juan Salvador gets under Tom’s skin. And he charms the staff, the other teachers, and the students. He listens. He eats fish from their hands. He charms them. They reveal their secrets to him.
Juan Salvador softens the bullies. He shows them how to be compassionate. He brings out the humanity in all of them. All of this is against a background of Argentina in the 1970s — the coup is going on, and people are still being disappeared.
And here we are in the US in 2025, where people are also being disappeared. Where our rights are disappearing. Where every headline seems to celebrate brutality and to devalue compassion. It is so easy to become cynical or to feel like things are hopeless. This is when it is most important to be in touch with our own humanity. To remember to love and to hope.
Anne Frank said, “Despite everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Juan Salvador helps us to remember that.