Shoplifters

Japanese auteur Hirokazu Koreeda’s Palme d’Or–winning film is a warm and moving depiction of a makeshift family living on the outskirts of society.

After sporadically employed father Osamu takes his young son out shoplifting one evening, they stumble across an abandoned five-year old girl on their trip back home. Taking her into their ramshackle house — shared also by Osamu’s wife Nobuyo, her younger sister Aki, and frail grandmother Hatsue — the family adopts the young girl and immerses her into their life of cheerful petty thievery. Koreeda has crafted a sumptuously lived-in world for these characters. Filled with both good humour and touching melancholy, Shoplifters is an irresistible tale about the meaning of family.