Shoplifters

Shoplifters (万引き家族, 2018) — watch online on iFILM. Hirokazu Kore-eda's Japanese drama won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2018 and is widely considered one of the finest films of that decade. Lily Franky and Sakura Ando lead a cast living on Tokyo's margins, getting by on a grandmother's pension and whatever they can lift from local shops.

Osamu and his son walk home after a petty theft and find a small girl shivering on a ground-floor balcony. They take her in. The family's cramped house already holds five people — grandmother Hatsue, played by Kirin Kiki in one of her final performances, anchors everyone with a quiet authority that nobody questions. Shoplifting is treated as practical, not criminal. Nobody gets hurt. The goods are just sitting there.

Then the girl's face appears on the news. What seemed like a loose arrangement of people sharing space starts to look like something more fragile — and more deliberate. Kore-eda, who also wrote the screenplay for BUN-BUKU, never forces a verdict. Stream Shoplifters (2018) online on iFILM.