Celebrated Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters , which won the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, releases on Friday across India and is being presented by PVR’s theatre-on-demand initiative Vakoo.
“Once you’re exposed to a work of great cinema, you obviously tend to develop a liking for such movies. We wanted to provide an opportunity for audiences to watch good cinema. Will they be interested in watching a foreign language film is a different issue,” says former director of the Mumbai International Film Festival Narayan Srinivasan, whose company IN2 Infotainment India has acquired the theatrical rights of Shoplifters .
When Narayan watched Shoplifters at Cannes, he was completely overwhelmed by its visceral impact, urging him to buy the theatrical rights. “I like Kore-eda’s movies; they are essentially about human emotions. I even have the rights of his Like Father, Like Son . This time, we are planning to release Shoplifters in eight metropolitan cities in India,” says Narayan, who is presenting Shoplifters along with his friend and actor Sanjay Suri.
This is not the first time Narayan is releasing a foreign language film in India. Earlier to this, he bought the rights of I, Daniel Blake in 2016 and released it for a limited audience in Mumbai. Following Shoplifters , Narayan says he will be releasing highly-regarded films such as Ash Is Purest White and Yomeddine in the coming months. “Depending on the reception, we are also planning to tap into tier two cities like Coimbatore in the future.” he adds.
Even before its theatrical release, Shoplifters won over the audience at various international film festivals, where the critics spoke in one voice. A deeply affecting tale about a dysfunctional family of outsiders, the film is a powerful exploration of human relationships. Shoplifters centres on a family of five that survives on shoplifting. It’s almost meditative narrative offers a peek into their invisible lives and their struggle to cope up with poverty, among other things. Kore-eda destroys the idea of family with the devastating last hour act, that questions social complexity.
