Shoplifters

Shoplifters

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Shoplifters is a deeply compassionate and quietly devastating portrait of a chosen family surviving on the margins of society. Directed by acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, the film examines what truly defines love, kinship, and morality in a world that often equates worth with legality.

The story follows Osamu and Nobuyo, a couple living in poverty who, along with their makeshift family, rely on petty theft to get by. When they take in a neglected young girl they find on the street, their fragile harmony begins to unravel—forcing each member to confront the truth about their bonds and the cost of survival.

Kore-eda’s direction is graceful and deeply humane, balancing social critique with emotional intimacy. Through naturalistic performances and understated beauty, he transforms an act of crime into a profound statement on empathy and belonging.

Shoplifters is a film of rare tenderness and complexity—an exploration of how love can thrive in the unlikeliest of places, and how even those living outside society’s rules can embody its purest humanity.