My Brilliant Life 2014

Dae-soo [Gang Dong-won] and Mi-ra [Song Hye-kyo] were both seventeen when Mi-ra became pregnant. Faced with harsh family rejection, they choose to run away from home and build a life together, held up by love and a stubborn will to care for their child. Their son, Ah-reum [Jo Sung-mok], is born into a world that immediately tests the strength of their bond and their resolve to protect him from the hardships ahead.

Ah-reum is diagnosed with progeria, a rare genetic disorder that causes him to age rapidly, a cruel twist of fate that reshapes the family’s days and dreams.

Years pass and Ah-reum is sixteen, but his body carries the age of an eighty-year-old man. The family confronts the heartbreaking reality that he may not reach his eighteenth birthday, a sobering countdown that casts a long shadow over their everyday lives. To mark the moments they share, Ah-reum writes a story about how his young parents fell in love and how he came to be, hoping to give it as a meaningful gift to them on his seventeenth birthday.

Meanwhile, Dae-soo and Mi-ra grapple with mounting hospital expenses and the fear of a shorter future together. To keep up with costs, Dae-soo takes on work as a taxi driver, while Mi-ra toils at a laundry, each of them juggling responsibilities with the fragile time they have left with their son.

A television crew learns of the family’s story and sets out to make a documentary about Ah-reum and his condition, drawn by the intimate drama and the resilience that threads through their lives. After the documentary is screened, Ah-reum begins to receive emails from another sick child, a young girl whose messages offer comfort and hope. Her words encourage him as he continues to recount the love story of his parents, using this final gift to them as a beacon of possibility in the face of hardship.