Shoplifters

Synopsis: Somewhere in Tokyo, Osamu Shibata and his wife Nobuyo live in poverty. While Osamu receives occasional employment and Nobuyo has a low-paying job, the family relies in large part on the grandmother’s pension. As he is shoplifting for groceries with his son, Shota, they discover Yuri, a homeless girl. Osamu takes her home, where the family observes evidence of abuse. Despite their strained finances, they informally adopt her.

AroView: Charming, funny and heartbreaking all at once, this drama from the Japanese master of humanism Kore-eda is set in Tokyo and follows a group of poverty-stricken outcasts who shoplift to make ends meet. A compassionate, resonant portrayal of family and survival.

“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.