"The subject of belonging is at the center of the work of Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose film “Shoplifters” won the Palme d’Or. His films are often about family, in its multiple and often compromised forms. With “Shoplifters,” he introduces more heartrending moral complexities than ever in an emotional story about a family that does the wrong things for the right reasons. The Shibata family of five—made up of father Osamu, mother Nobuyo, their pre-teen son Shota, Nobuyo’s younger sister Aki, and their crusty granny seems normal up to a point. They live on the precarious edge of insolvency in granny’s tiny apartment, and depend on her social security check to supplement meager incomes. It is immediately seen that shopping for food and other essentials is accomplished by way of shoplifting, and father and son are slick experts on an awesome scale."