Wow! Such a good movie.

People are voting emotionally.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

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.

When I purchased this movie from Amazon, then it was with a high level of expectation, as it had been getting great reviews just about anywhere you looked. And it was supposed to be such a great movie from these reviews.And now having seen the movie, I can't really claim to see the hype about this movie. Now, I am not saying that the movie is bad or boring, far from it. It is actually an enjoyable movie, however it just wasn't all that spectacular.You should note that this movie trots ahead at a fairly plain pace, without anything overly excitingly happening throughout the entire course of the movie. The story, as you might already know, is about a group of four children being left alone to fend for themselves in a small apartment in Japan, as their mother leaves them to "go to work" and doesn't come back; simply abandoning her children.What makes the movie work is the purity and perfection in the acting performances put on by the four children in the lead roles. They really impressed me, and it was worth watching the movie for. The story itself become a secondary aspect to me, as it wasn't all that interesting. And at points the director, Hirokazu Koreeda, simply skips over some of the topics without delving too far into exploring them, and that made certain parts of the movie come off as rushed and not given the proper attention or screen time.The characters in the movie were nicely detailed, and again nicely portrayed by the children hired to play these roles. It is characters that you immediately form a sort of bond and sympathy for, and you actually do ride along with them on their individual victories, triumphs and failures."Nobody Knows" is a nice movie, but personally I didn't get the hype around it, as I have seen far better movies. Oh, and a fair warning, note that the movie is rather long, at 140 minutes, or at least it seems long and to go on for a very long time because of the speed the movie progresses at.

Acclaimed movie Dare mo shiranai (Nobody Knows, 2004) and related featurettes on the DVD from my Tokyo acquisition earlier this year, easily proved to be well worthy of my prolonged attention.Though slow-moving and long (almost 2.5 hours), one never gets bored watching four kids (in the movie of the age of 4, 6, 10 and 12 years) trying to survive on their own. Kids are kawaii (cute) and their performances touching, while bringing to life a bittersweet story of abandoned children. Trying to avoid attention from authorities and subsequent institutionalisation or imposed guardianship, inevitably leading to their separation, they are concealing the fact from their landlords and neighbours, continuing to live alone and thus staying together, sadly, with an almost unsurprisingly tragic outcome. Indeed a powerful story, based on real events. Unfortunately, as found on the free on-line encyclopedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_(2004_film), actual events, taking place in 1988 in Tokyo's Toshima-ku (ward), thoroughly described in "The affair of the four abandoned children of Sugamo" depiction of the incident, have been even far more gruesome. Well deserved rating 9 out of 10.

Hirokazu Koreeda's 'Dare Mo Shiranai' tells the heartbreaking story of four abandoned young siblings who struggle to survive in an apartment. The apartment was restricted to two people (where no little children were allowed). It is known that Akira and his mother were the only tenants thus the three other children are living in secret (and are not allowed to leave the apartment or make any noise in case the neighbours got suspicious). While Akira is the only one allowed to leave the apartment, he is forbidden to go to school. After their self-centred mother's long term departure due to her 'work', 12-year-old Akira, the eldest one, serves as a parent striving to provide food for his brother and sisters but he too is only a child and how will he, in a world run by adults, support his siblings? The director tells this unique story in a very heartfelt, sensitive way. 'Dare Mo Shiranai' is based on a true event (which was far more harrowing) but I can see that he might have been inspired by movies like 'Hotaru No Haka' and perhaps William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'. With the minimal use of music, special effects the film has an unpolished look which makes the characters' sense of isolation and despair all the more authentic to the viewer. The whimsical background score is cleverly used and it brings a poetic feel. The child actors are excellent. It is Yûya Yagira who confidently carries the film but each one of these kids deliver very natural performances. It's hard to tell whether they were acting. Moreover because the film is sort of shot in documentary format it is easy to forget that one is watching a film. I wonder how the director got the kids to act so restrained. 'Dare Mo Shiranai' is a beautiful film that depicts the importance of a responsible adult figure in children's lives but it also demonstrates that children too are strong even though inexperienced. Yet, no matter what, the importance of a significant nurturing adult is crucial for a child's development.