“The Year’s Most Compassionate Movie” SHOPLIFTERS opens Thursday at AFS Cinema

SHOPLIFTERS opens this Thursday, January 3rd at AFS Cinema. Buy your tickets today.

This week we emerge from holiday hibernation into an all new year, and we’re already hearing some rumors that it is going to be the Best Year of All Time. If SHOPLIFTERS, the new film from Hirokazu Kore-eda, is any indication, we’re inclined to believe it. We are proud to present this film, which won of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and has found its way onto virtually every critic’s year-end list (also Barack Obama’s, somehow). We won’t say much about it – it’s a movie about a family that lives on the edge of society – but we will encourage you to see it at the AFS Cinema with people you love.

“It’s a pretty amazing neo-neo-realist film about a family of very poor people in a city in Japan who make a living hand-to-mouth: stealing, hustling, begging, living however they can. Things happen over the course of the family’s life of course, which I won’t spoil here. A really nice, really wonderful, well-acted film.” – AFS Film Programmer Lars Nilsen

Here’s what the Critics Are Saying:

Ranked at #10 of the Austin Chronicle’s Top 10 Films of 2018

“SHOPLIFTERS achieves that ultimate goal of art as expressed by the artist Robert Filliou: It’s art that makes life more interesting than art.”Slate

“Kore-eda has the sensitive, calibrated touch of a master safecracker, and he’s a virtuoso of emotional and narrative buildup.”New York Times

“This soft-spoken, cinematic treasure about a family of thieves highlights the quietly devastating artistry of Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda. It’s impossible to experience the deep-seated compassion of this film and not be moved to tears.”Rolling Stone

“For the bulk of ‘Shoplifters,’ Kore-eda works in a beautiful register that feels both detailed and genuine at the same time.”RogerEbert.com

“This is the year’s most compassionate movie.” – Time Out New York

SHOPLIFTERS opens this Thursday, January 3rd at AFS Cinema. Buy your tickets today.

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