Sunday's award caps a triumphant 12 months for Luc Jacquet's film "March of the Penguins," which has already drawn 16 million cinemagoers worldwide and has become the most successful French film abroad in the past decade.

Although it has proved vastly more popular abroad than in France, the penguins' lonely journey across Antarctic to find a mate ended up touching a common nerve of love and fragility in people across the world.

The birds' human-like stoicism during their treacherous annual mating ritual transformed the small wildlife documentary into a nail-biting drama which had audiences on the edge of their seats.

"The film touches on a universal emotion," Jacquet told AFP in an interview last year.

But it was not the human themes of love and loneliness that Jacquet set out to capture when he headed to freezing Antarctica to document the birds' annual mating pilgrimage. It was the battle of the species to survive against all odds that fascinated him.

"What is most important for me is the extreme fragility of the emperor penguin. That's the story I wanted to tell. The penguins make this incredible journey, and then everything can fall to pieces in an instant," he said.

The documentary follows the penguins as they make their annual trek across the snowy continent to find a mate. Once a single egg is laid, the males then spend 120 days carefully balancing the precious, fragile egg on their feet while the females return to the sea to find fish.

When the females return with food for the young chick, the starving males then have to head back to the sea to find their own nourishment.

Filmed on land and in water in the inhospitable frozen wastelands over a 13-month period, the 90-minute documentary, which is narrated in English by US actor Morgan Freeman, follows the penguins' precarious existence, which can so easily end in tragedy.

If the egg breaks, if it touches the ice and freezes, or if the mother is eaten by a leopard seal while hunting for fish, then the baby's fate is sealed and it will die.

Conditions during filming were extremely tough. Temperatures plunged to minus 40 degrees (Celsius and Fahrenheit), and winds would blow at speeds of up to 300 kilometers (190 miles) an hour.

But since its launch, the 3.4-million-dollar film has raked in more than 76 million dollars in the United States and Canada alone, and 26.9 million dollars in the rest of the world.