From the jaunty opening music and wry delivery of Steve Coogan’s introductory few lines, you'd be forgiven for experiencing a sinking sensation that we're back in whimsical British feel-good film territory: this time, with a cute, waddling bird. Happily, Peter Cattaneo’s new film offers a little more drama and nuance than you might fear, managing real emotion as well as a few laughs from deeply unusual subject matter.

Drawn from a 2015 memoir by Tom Michell, who Steve Coogan plays, this follows a misanthropic teacher who's cruising sourly through life, barely engaging, in an Argentinian boys’ school. Through an odd series of events, he ends up reluctantly adopting a penguin christened Juan Salvador — but he's also on the fringes of Argentina's 1976 military coup, and witnesses a left-leaning acquaintance being ‘disappeared’ by the military police. So it's Dead Poets Society meets I'm Still Here meets… Happy Feet?

Works surprisingly well to soften tough subject matter.