Shoplifters

Screening on 19/04/2019

Japan 2018
Dir: Koreeda Hirokazu
Starring: Lily Franky, Ando Sakura, Kiki Kilin
Cert 15
120 mins

A disparate group of adults and children, living on the margins of contemporary Japanese society, supplement their poorly paid work with forays into petty crime. Sharing the cramped, ramshackle house of elderly widow Hatsue are couple Osamu and Noboyo, teenage girl Sayaka and younger boy Shota. Add Juri, a little girl whom they “adopt”, believing her to be neglected by her mother, and the family unit is complete; grandmother, mother and father, son, daughter and “adopted” daughter. Despite the hardship of their everyday life, they live happily enough together, taking care of each other the best they can. However two crises, the sudden death of Hatsue and the hospitalisation of Shota, threaten to destroy their way of life, and the ensuing investigations make us reevaluate what exactly constitutes a family. A compassionate and sensitive piece of filmmaking, “Shoplifters” was rewarded with the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

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