Now is a great time to be a fan of Korean director Hirokazu Koreeda. He’s moving at a brisk pace delivering his brand of sobering family drama, and has two on the way in the next few months. Fortunately, we’ve got looks at both of them. First is the debut image for Shoplifters, which stars Lily Franky, Sakura Ando, Kengo Kora, Sosuke Ikematsu, Chizuru Ikewaki, Yuki Yamada, Yoko Moriguchi and Akira Emoto. They play members of a shoplifting family that take in an orphan, sparking the reveal of deeply hidden secrets. Here’s the synopsis:
After one of their shoplifting sessions, Osamu and his son come across a little girl in the freezing cold. At first reluctant to shelter the girl, Osamu’s wife agrees to take care of her after learning of the hardships she faces. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them…
Next up is a U.K. trailer [via FirstShowing] for Koreeda’s courtroom drama/murder mystery, The Third Murder. A change of pace for the director, the film stars Masaharu Fukuyama as a defense attorney in a murder-robbery case that his client has already confessed to. The attorney thinks something is up with his confession, though…
Leading attorney Shigemori takes on the defence of murder-robbery suspect Misumi who served jail time for another murder 30 years ago. Shigemori’s chances of winning the case seem low – his client freely admits his guilt, despite facing the death penalty if he is convicted. As he digs deeper into the case, as he hears the testimonies of the victim’s family and Misumi himself, the once confident Shigemori begins to doubt whether his client is the murderer after all.
Neither film has a U.S. release date yet. Shoplifters opens in Japan in June while The Third Murder hits the U.K. next month.
