My Love, Don’t Cross That River

The sleeper smash hit of 2014, My Love, Don’t Cross the River knocked Interstellar out of the top spot week after week, becoming the highest-grossing Korean documentary of all time, the highest-grossing Korean independent movie of all time, and the best love story of the decade. (Sorry, A Fault in Our Stars.) Jo is 98. Kang is 89. An elderly couple of modest means living in a mountain village, they have been married for 76 years. Playful and devoted, they’ve never been more in love. They may be pushing a century, but the couple still know how to have fun, picking sunflowers for each other’s hair in spring, clowning around amid the falling leaves in autumn, and having snowball fights in winter. “I look old and gray, but you haven’t aged a day,” Kang marvels. But the weight of encroaching of time is clear, and as the days tick by at least one of them is going to cross the river. Director Jin Mo-young encapsulates the lives of Jo and Kang in a series of simple, beautiful moments: a weathered hand caressing a face, the couple buying baby clothes for the children they never got to raise. You’ll never see another love story like it; you can only hope to be lucky enough to live it.

Presented with the support of Korean Cultural Service New York.