It was 14 years ago when I first saw this. More than a decade went by, knowing the main actor (the big brother in the movie, Yuya Yagira) winning the best actor award at Cannes at 14, watching director Hirokazu Koreeda's other work such as "I wish", "Our little sister", "Like father, like son", and recently "Shoplifters", it is time to revisit his earlier work and see how his themes evolves. And there are lots of recurring themes. Like his other work, this bittersweet movie exposes the dark side of the modern Japan society. What is more appalling is that the movie is based on an even more tragic event happened in 1988. Four children aged 3 to 14, malnourished, were found abandoned in their apartment in Nishi Sugamo in Tokyo. In the previous autumn, the mom met a new man. Leaving 50,000 yen behind, she asked the oldest son to take care of his siblings and disappeared. With different fathers, the kids were not even registered and did not go to school. The children have been living in the tiny apartment alone for nine months without anyone knowing their existence.Yet the movie shows very strongly that kids are tough and there is hope. As in the director's other movies, children are the center of attention and the portrayal of their mundane everyday life just steals the show, especially the elder brother, grade six student Akira (Yuya Yagira). He is great in showing the responsibility he shoulders without any complaint. He just silently endures and never questions his selfish mom (YOU) who left a note one day and disappeared. Yet when an emergency happens, he knows where to call and when he finds he gets nowhere, he just bangs on the phone and throws his mom's clothes away the floor. Great directing and expression of emotion. The other kids are also very good, except the younger brother Shigeru (Hiei Kimura) should be made thinner after months of starvation. The youngest sister Yuki (Momoko Shimizu) was so cute but when she was sweating and feeling hungry in the power off apartment dripping in sweat, one cannot help but feel sorry for them. My heart really sank at a scene when Shigeru's chewing woke Akira who asked what his brother was eating. Shigeru murmured an answer as he turned over to try to sleep. It hurts more to see him turning his back. Written by the director, nobody knows has a very strong script. Knowing his mother is not coming back for a while, all Akira does and thinks are practical solutions. He asks help to make New Year gift money packs to his brothers and sisters and continues to shop and feed them. He himself is still a kid, he likes to play and has his dream too. On the practical side, he goes to Pachinko to make friends and hope to get some food from them. On the dream side, he plays baseball for an absent student. Lots of issues are revealed: selfish parents, lack of child care support, stigma against single parent family etc. In addition, school bully deters some kids and even parents from sending children to schools. But the kids are strong and practical. They have their own ways to survive. They never complain and always hope that one day their mom will come back with gifts. Kyoko (Ayu Kitaura) even stays in the aroma of her mom by hiding in the closet. Even after a tragedy Akira had his own way of dealing with it. Just too much for a young kid who did not even go to middle school! Adults who abuse children's trusts and hope make me so angry.I like how the director presents the passage of time by showing the grown hair, the change of seasons, the wildly grown plants in the balcony, the shoes to flip flops, the sweats on the kids' faces, their dirty and worn out clothes and their hungry and weary faces; yet even amid all these setbacks, the children venture out of the apartment to clean themselves and have fun. The plants sprung out from the ditch is just like themselves although they ask "Are they abandoned? How sad!" Abandoned kids feeling sorry for abandoned plants and take them home to treasure - a similar representation we would later see in "Shoplifters." In the end four kids walk in the sun, as if they belong to the same family - a similar theme in "Our little sister" where the core siblings take in an extra sister. Although their birth parents are selfish, some adults are caring, such as one of mom's former boyfriends and the convenient store clerk. Very sad to hear that in the real incident an extra sister was killed by the friends of the elder brother. It is more tragic than the movie. Sometimes reality is more horrible and and I believe the director wants to show the resilience of children and his hope for the future. Great movie though a little heavy. Highly recommended.

'Nobody Knows' is a deeply moving film. It sheds light on a disturbing reality that we may not be aware of or may not even want to think about but definitely exists in the world we live in. The plot says it all: A group of children try to stick together and live a 'normal' life after their so-called mother leaves them one day, never to return. I was amazed by how well those small kids played their respective roles in such a serious film. If you like thought-provoking films, you should definitely watch this one. In this day and age when teenagers throw tantrums at their parents over petty issues, this film will make you feel lucky that you even have a parent or a guardian who looks after you and cares about you.The film is also aptly titled as despite the inconceivable situations that these kids have been through, you never know what the future holds for them but you definitely hope things somehow get better.

A semi-fictionalized adaption of a true incident where a single mother abandons four children to live by themselves seems the material of exploitation or empty moralizing. But Kore-eda proves himself one of the finest film makers in the world today with this straight up masterpiece - a gorgeous, searingly intelligent, beautifully made film.One of the great strengths of this film is that he never takes the easy way out and judges the adults or tries to score easy points about an atomized, uncaring society. The mother is portrayed as child like herself, narcissistic, but more deluded than evil, she somehow convinces herself that her 12 year old son is capable of looking after the family. The adults are just regular people, going about their lives without feeling the need to ask awkward questions about the dirty looking children who turn up sometimes at playgrounds or wander around parks. The only people who suspect these children are abandoned are teenagers working in local shops, who are cowed into not taking the initiative, instead just offering little acts of kindness to the kids, accepting at face value the lies given to them.This is perhaps the most successful film ever made which gives a genuine child's eyed view of the world. The acting by the child actors is simply astonishing - completely naturalistic. The way in which these fundamentally nice kids try their best to deal with the situation they are landed in, but which inevitably falls apart is deeply moving and entirely convincing. The film is long, but is entirely engrossing, and enlightened with moments of real beauty and grace. The scene where the older boy and a lonely girl he meets bring his dead sister to the airport, where he always said he would show here the airplanes landing is quite stunning. To avoid sentimentality or exploitation in scenes like this requires a film maker with deep humanity, as well as immense technical skill. The film is not the easiest of viewing, but after seeing this film, you will never forget it. Absolutely essential.

Sure "Nobody knows" has an interesting premise with 4 children forced to live on their own and how they are coping with it. But I nearly fell asleep several times through the movie because the way of its storytelling (if you can call it that because it pretty much leads nowhere) is unbelievably slow. The movie starts of with the family moving into a new flat, at that point its just the single mom with the oldest son Akira who introduces herself to the landlord while the younger kids are smuggled in the flat in suitcases and oldest sister Kyoko arrives by train. You never quite get to know how things came to become like this... the kids are hidden and like the title says nobody knows about their existence because except for Akira who becomes kind of the caring father for the family no kid is allowed to leave the flat. From here on the movie just deals with their everyday routine... the mother, a prostitute as I expect, is absent more and more until she disappears and just sends cash by mail. She is depicted as a loving yet kind of childlike mother who can't take the responsibility.The fathers are all different guys who are introduced shortly as non caring slackers but I never understood why these kids all don't go to school with their mother telling them they can't because they don't have fathers. A lot is left pretty wide open and I guess the mother is supposed to have some mental defect, otherwise the whole thing is pretty unbelievable. When she meets a man and disappears Akira finally becomes the father part of the family trying to cope with feeding the kids and taking care of the flat while finding some friends and trying to live a normal kids live which obviously fails in the less than normal surrounding. Bills don't get paid, the kids lose electricity and then water and try to get by getting water from a playground fountain and doing laundry there. Later in the movie they leave their flat but it seems like nobody cares if they do and honestly the viewer cares less too because the movie is so slow with so little dialog and some scenes stretched to a seemingly endless level. The characters sure are interesting, especially Akira and the sweet little Yuki amidst that mess she couldn't choose. It looks like Akira wants to keep the kids together because he fears they could be separated to several child homes if someone finds out.But thats about all you know... the daily routine is getting more desperate, the state of the flat and the kids clothes is deteriorating and finally Yuki gets ill. What makes it hard to get into the movie beside the extremely slow pacing is that the kids are not depicted as a loving family but rather like just trying to get by. The barely talk and seem separate so their fun time strolls as well as Yukis dramatic burial (sure, you get a piece of drama too) seem distant and right then the movie ends. Mother keeps sending cash by mail, everything just goes on. I pretty much felt left down after watching this boring movie with an end like this. Seeing the 8point votes I really wonder if we watched the same movie because since the cinematography was rather average and the music close to non existing there is not much that makes me want to give more than 4points to this one. Only for people who are into slow artsy dramas with endless shots.