Shoplifters
2018, 121 minutes, Digital, Rated R
Japan
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
On the margins of Tokyo, a dysfunctional band of outsiders are united by fierce loyalty, a penchant for petty theft and playful grifting. When the young son is arrested, secrets are exposed that upend their tenuous, below-the-radar existence and test their quietly radical belief that it is love — not blood — that defines a family.
WINNER OF THE 2018 PALME D’OR
Cannes Film Festival
“The work of a master in full command of his art… A tender ensemble piece whose skillful performances dovetail into a perfectly symphonic whole, Shoplifters is a work of such emotional delicacy and formal modesty that you’re barely prepared when the full force of what it’s doing suddenly knocks you sideways.”
— Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
“Shoplifters showcases one of the modern cinema’s great empaths deploying compassion like a time-delay nerve agent; this is Koreeda’s expansive humanism, weaponised.”
— Jessica Kiang, Sight and Sound
“Every scene adds another onion-skinlike layer, adding density and mass so slowly that you hardly notice the emotional weight of it all until it is suddenly overwhelming.”
— Emily Yoshida, New York Magazine
Grade: A-
“Kore‑eda Hirokazu reaffirms himself as one of the world’s best auteurs.”
— David Ehrlich, IndieWire
Additional Images
