Shoplifters (2018)

Hirokazu Kore-eda has built a career on films about the quiet bonds between people, but Shoplifters may be where he reaches the peak of that craft. The story follows an unconventional working-class family in Tokyo, held together not by blood but by choice and necessity, and the film treats their shoplifting not as a moral failing but as the texture of their daily survival. What makes it so stirring is how Kore-eda refuses to judge these people. He watches them with the same patient tenderness he has brought to all his best work, and the result is a portrait of love that society would rather not acknowledge.

The performances across the board are extraordinary, particularly from the children, who carry scenes with a naturalness that feels unrehearsed. Kore-eda balances social commentary with humor and warmth so deftly that the film never feels like a lecture, even when it is clearly furious about the systems that fail families like this one. The final act delivers some of the most emotionally devastating filmmaking of the year, pulling apart the family piece by piece and asking the audience to sit with what is lost.

This is a film that stole my heart and then some. It is one of Kore-eda’s finest achievements, and it earned every bit of the Palme d’Or it took home from Cannes.