Communal Complicity: Family and Fairness in Hirokazu Koreeda's 'Shoplifters' and 'The Blind Murder'

In these two films, beloved Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda returns once again to his favoured themes of family and the ties that bind in a complicated, sometimes-cutthroat world. While wildly different in narrative and style, The Third Murder and the Palme d'Or–winning Shoplifters share a preoccupation with society's interventions on social responsibility – particularly in the guise of the judicial process, writes Anthony Carew.

Additional keywords:
Asian cinema, Japan, makeshift family, found family, social realism, welfare, pension, class, Lily Franky, Kirin Kiki, crime, thriller, whodunnit, justice, legal system, scam, loophole.