A Little Life

The title of Korean director Kim Yong-cheon’s first feature is somewhat misleading. But in a good and modest way: there’s actually a lot of life in A Little Life, primarily due to the mix of maturity and dynamism of its two child actors. Playing two young girls bringing their own traumas to their temporary stay at a children’s shelter, Park Soo-ah and Kang Hye-won give resounding performances that illustrate the different ways in which children face off trauma.

“We aren’t the problem – adults are,” says Bo-ra (Kang) to Eun-ha (Park), as they come clean to each other about why they ended up in official care. She is of course summing up her observations about the grown-ups she knows, but her comment might as well be a nod to Kim’s screenplay for A Little Life. The 41-year-old director should have been bold enough to tell the story as much as he could from the children’s perspective. While he certainly manages to convey the girls’ roller coaster state of mind at its most convincing and palpable, the aunts and uncles – especially the one played by A-list TV star Kim Hyun-joo – become mostly superfluous caricatures.

With his first feature, however, Kim has proved to be more than competent in both teasing nuanced turns from his very young leads, while also heightening their characters’ shock, sadness and joy through the shadows, light and colour palette on screen. Admittedly, A Little Life remains some distance from the very high bar set by recent traumatised-kids films such as Youn Ga-eun’s The World of Love. But Kim shows the poise and humanity which should take him far. He is one of the two filmmakers selected by the Jeonju Cinema Project (the only 2026 entry being Marta Popivoda’s Body in Plural).

A Little Life begins with two deaths: a car is shown being fished out of a river, and it transpires that the two adult passengers are dead. The only survivor in the crash is Eun-ha, who wakes up to find herself in the care of Ja-yeong (Kim Hyun-joo), an aunt who has long been estranged from the girl’s family. At once in denial about what happened and fuming quietly about the attitude of the grown-ups – including her dead parents, her distant aunt, her disapproving uncle and some other relatives harbouring self-interested designs for her future – Eun-ha runs away and ends up transferred to a children’s home.

It’s there she gradually opens up in the company of her new friend Bo-ra, who says she will return home once her father is “back from his business trip”. This is, of course, just a front conjured by a confused child who can’t come to terms with the dysfunctions of her family and the adult world in general. Coming up with their own pranks, games and make-believes, the two girls help each other confront their very different inner demons. Then the real-world manifestation of them, the adults, again intervene as the film spirals towards its conclusion.

Being the beating hearts of the film, Park and Kang are like yin and yang: the former conjuring Eun-ha’s pained silence and steeled defiance, and the latter revealing the anguish which explains Bo-ra’s maturity beyond her age. Kim’s admirable attempt in matching the kids’ tristesse is a bit undermined by the sketchy reasons and contradictory emotions he  gives to the aunt to explain her reluctance to embrace her niece completely.

The child stars’ strong performances unfold in parallel to Song Hyun-suk’s camerawork, guiding the audience as Eun-ha journeys from the darkness of early trauma to the brighter vistas she shares with Bo-ra. On the strength of A Little Life, there should be more to come from Kim as a filmmaker in the future.

Director, screenplay: Kim Yong-cheon
Producers: Seo Min-woo
Cast: Park Soo-ah, Kang Hye-won, Kim Hyun-joo
Cinematography: Song Hyun-suk
Editing: Lee Yeon-jeong
Production designer: Kim Hye-bin
Music: Kwon Se-young
Sound: Kim Won
Production company: Cinemoment
World Sales: JEONJU International Film Festival
Venue: JEONJU International Film Festival (Jeonju Cinema Project)
In Korean
89 minutes