A deeply humane, quietly devastating family drama that uses crime only as a pressure point for questions of care, poverty, and belonging. It’s tender, funny, and heartbreaking, with a final stretch that recontextualizes everything that came before.
96% ★★★★★ (398,312)
Shoplifters
Where to watch: Amazon
Movie · Drama · Crime · R
2018 · 2h 0m · ★ 96% (398K)
Sometimes you choose your family.
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Starring: Lily Franky, Sakura Ando, Mayu Matsuoka
Overview
In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.
Director
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Production
Fuji Television Network, AOI Pro., BUN-BUKU, GAGA Corporation
Cast
Lily Franky, Sakura Ando, Mayu Matsuoka, Kairi Jo, Miyu Sasaki, Kirin Kiki, Sosuke Ikematsu, Naoto Ogata, Yōko Moriguchi, Yuki Yamada, Moemi Katayama, Kengo Kora, Chizuru Ikewaki, Akira Emoto, Aju Makita, Hajime Inoue, Haruna Hori, Nana Mizoguchi, Madoka Tomosaki
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A deeply humane, quietly devastating family drama that uses crime only as a pressure point for questions of care, poverty, and belonging. It’s tender, funny, and heartbreaking, with a final stretch that recontextualizes everything that came before.
Best for
viewers who like intimate character studies
fans of emotional, socially conscious dramas
people interested in unconventional family stories
audiences who appreciate restrained, naturalistic filmmaking
viewers open to bittersweet, tearjerker endings
Skip if
you want a fast-paced crime thriller
you prefer clear moral binaries
you dislike slow-burn, observational storytelling
you’re looking for a conventional plot-driven family drama
Overview
Shoplifters is one of those films that begins in warmth and ends in a bruise. Kore-eda observes a makeshift household with such tenderness that the apartment feels like a world unto itself, full of small routines, jokes, and acts of survival that register as love before they register as theft.
Worth noting
What makes the film so affecting is its refusal to flatten anyone into a symbol. Every character is carrying damage, need, and affection at the same time, and the movie keeps asking whether family is something inherited, chosen, or merely endured. The performances are beautifully lived-in, especially in the scenes where care and desperation are indistinguishable.
Bottom line
By the end, the film has quietly shifted from a portrait of marginal life into a devastating moral reckoning. It’s compassionate without being sentimental, and precise without feeling cold. If you respond to cinema that finds enormous feeling in small gestures, this is essential viewing.
Top Letterboxd reviews
#1 gizmo fan (4.5★) · 5897 likes
"If they love you, this is what they do."
davidehrlich (4.5★) · 2150 likes
Osamu and his wife Nobuyo can’t afford to have sex anymore. Middle-aged and marginally employed, the Shibata couple is crammed into a ramshackle apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo, along with a pre-teen son named Shota (Jyo Kairi), Nobuyo’s younger sister (Matsuoka Mayu), and the frail grandmother whose monthly pension keeps everything from falling apart. The musty hovel can hardly fit all of the life that’s stuffed inside of it; random boxes and old toys are scattered in every direction,
Jacob (5★) · 2020 likes
"I don't know anything else to teach them." If you have the chance to see this, please do. Its kindness feels even greater on a second viewing. You can say so much about how people live through such a simple story.
Lucy (4.5★) · 1701 likes
AFI 2018: film #8 “but sometimes it’s better to choose your own family” familiar and warm. the last act raises the stakes, but it’s the family dynamic that shines
Jay D 's Watching (4.5★) · 1654 likes
There's a scene about the midway of the film, where Sakura Ando is casually wearing a shirt with the quote 'Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed' while she talks to her sister in the kitchen-the camera doesn't particularly linger on the shirt or its caption, although the scene lasts long enough to give the viewer a chance to read it, but the more I think about it, the more central it