In the year 2154 there are two classes: the wealthy upper class who lives in the luxurious space station "Elysium" and the poor, the majority of people, who work in very poor conditions on the overpopulated earth. While the poor are doomed to suffer and die, the wealthy people have a lot of good medicine on Elysium, enabling them to kill cancer and radiation poisoning.
Max Da Costa works in a factory on earth and, after accidentally being exposed to a deadly radiation poisoning at work, has only five days to live. He struggles to reach Elysium to be safed there. With the help of an old friend they develop a plan that suddenly throws Max into the political intrigues of Elysium while he tries to reach Elysium with the daughter of an old friend who suffers from leucemia.