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"Nobody Knows" (Daremo
Shiranai), the newest film by Hirokazu Kore-eda,
is coming to our region this February. It is
regarded by many critics as the best work
to-date of a formative director with a talent
for documentary-style fictional dramas. The film
has been an Official Selection of the 2004
Cannes Film Festival, a Golden Palm nominee, and
Japan’s official entry in the 2005 Oscar
competition.
Its 14 year-old protagonist, Yuya Yagira, received the
2004 Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor Award for
his role in this quirky, but real-life story
about a makeshift family of children left to
survive in an urban jungle.
Director Kore-eda, whose previous films include "Maborosi"
and "After-life," introduces us to four siblings
living happily with their mother in a small
apartment in Tokyo. The children all have
different fathers, have never been to school,
and the very existence of three of them has been
hidden from the landlord. One day, the mother
leaves behind a little money and a note asking
her 12-year-old boy (played by Yagira) to look
after his younger siblings. Because the children
were never officially registered, "nobody knows"
who they are or that they exist.
Despite their mother’s abandonment, the four children
do their best to survive in their own little
world, devising and following their own set of
rules. But when they have no choice but to
engage with the world outside their apartment,
the fragile balance that has sustained them
collapses. |
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Detail of
movie poster of "Nobody Knows"
with photo by Rinko Kawauchi |
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Kore-eda incorporates documentary techniques to make
this film extraordinarily intimate and
unaffected. The film is said to be based on a
1988 event, the "Affair of the Four Abandoned
Children of Nishi-Sugamo." Filmed
chronologically over a year, "Nobody Knows"
captures the young amateur actors growing as
their characters do, highlighting the details of
the children’s lives - whether the nuances of a
manicure, a toy piano, squeaking sandals, a cup
of instant noodles, or a box of chocolates - to
evoke not only the distinctive world of these
particular abandoned children, but the
gentleness and beauty of every childhood.
In New York, the film will appear at Landmark’s
Sunshine Cinema (143 E. Houston Street,
212-330-8182) and Lincoln Plaza Cinema (1886
Broadway, 212-757-2280). For more details,
contact the theaters or IFC Films by visiting
its website,
www.ifcfilms.com/nobody.
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