When Shoplifters (2018) came out, my husband and my auntie kept telling me, "You've got to watch this film," and I kept putting it off. I'm quite bad… - Wunmi Mosaku

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When Shoplifters (2018) came out, my husband and my auntie kept telling me, "You've got to watch this film," and I kept putting it off. I'm quite bad in the cinema, honestly. Generally, if you put me in a dark room, I'll want to go to sleep. I'm dyslexic as well, so reading the subtitles in foreign films can be really hard for me. But watching Shoplifters was, for me, like the first time I actually read a novel. I usually just read plays or short stories, but when I read a novel for the first time, I felt like I finally got to experience the full breadth of a story.
Shoplifters was the first time a foreign film really opened me up like that. Reading the subtitles wasn't a chore, and my heart really broke open. I wasn't expecting that. I thought the subtitles would create a separation between the film and I, but they didn't. It’s a perfect film. The acting in it is really human and really honest, too. There's no frills in those performances. It's just, this is who we are, how we feel, what we’re doing, and how we're living.