Nobody Knows (2004 film)

Nobody Knows
File:Nobody Knows movie2.jpg Film poster
Directed by	Hirokazu Koreeda
Written by	Hirokazu Koreeda
Produced by	Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring	Yûya Yagira Ayu Kitaura Hiei Kimura
Distributed by	IFC Films (USA)
Release date	August 7, 2004 (2004-08-07)
Running time	141 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Nobody Knows (誰も知らない; Dare mo shiranai) is a 2004 Japanese film directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. The movie is based on a 1988 event best known as the "Affair of the four abandoned children of Sugamo". The story is about four children, each a child by a different father, abandoned by their mother. They are then forced to survive on their own.

Cast

Actor	Role
Yūya Yagira	Akira
Ayu Kitaura	Kyoko-San
Hiei Kimura	Shigeru
Momoko Shimizu	Yuki
Hanae Kan	Saki
You	Keiko, the mother
Kazumi Kushida	Yoshinaga, the landlord
Yukiko Okamoto	Eriko Yoshinaga
Sei Hiraizumi	Mini-market manager
Ryo Kase	Mini-market employee
Yuichi Kimura	Sugihara (taxi driver)
Kenichi Endo	Pachinko parlor employee
Susumu Terajima	Baseball coach
Takako Tate	Mini-market teller

Actual event

Compared with the film's version of the story, the actual events of the "Affair of the four abandoned children of Sugamo" upon which the movie is based were far more grisly.

Originally, the mother had five children, two boys and three girls. The younger boy (born in 1984) died from an illness shortly after birth. Because none of the five children were registered (she had asked the father of the oldest son to register them for marriage, as well as register his birth; he did neither, causing the mother to not register any of the others), she wrapped her dead son in some plastic sheets with some deodorizer and hid him in a closet.

When she left to live with her new boyfriend, leaving her children behind, the oldest boy was around 14 years old, and he had three younger sisters, age seven years, three years, and two years.

The older boy took to bringing two friends over ("A" and "B" in the report). These boys were much more brutal than the characters depicted in the film. Ultimately, one of them, "B," became angry at the two-year-old girl for eating a bowl of ramen he'd brought over and beat her, ultimately killing her.

The oldest son and friend "A" packed her body, took her to some nearby mountains, and buried her in a shallow grave in April 1988.

In July 1988, the landlord realized that the apartment seemed to be occupied only by children and called the police, who found the two remaining girls badly malnourished. Searching the apartment, they discovered the dead boy whom the mother had hidden. Authorities later found the body of the youngest daughter near Chichibu City.

The story was covered very heavily by the mass media. The mother, seeing it on the news, wondered if they were her children and turned herself in to the police within a week of the children's discovery.

The eldest boy was not in the room when his sister was killed but suspected that it was friend "B." Criminal charges were brought against the eldest boy, but they were later dropped. The children's true names were never released to the media.

The mother spent three years in prison with a further four years of probation after release. She eventually regained custody of her two surviving daughters following her release.

Production

Director Hirokazu Koreeda had drafted and revised several screenplays for over 15 years until production from autumn 2002 to summer 2003. The reel was filmed chronologically and 70% of the story was set in a cramped Tokyo apartment (with every room built specifically for the film).

Although the script was initially very detailed, some new elements were introduced during production:

• Yūya, the boy playing Akira, frequently brought in and enjoyed eating Apollo Chocolates on the set. This was later brought in to Yuki's character.
• Within filming breaks, the children were asked to write in their own journal entries about what they were thinking, ranging from the film to their own everyday concerns.
• During the casting, a little girl came in with noisy sandals. The director liked it so much that he brought it over to Yuki's character when searching for her mother.

The soundtrack for the movie was written by the Japanese guitar duo Gontiti.

Awards

Yūya Yagira won the award for Best Actor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

External links

• Official Site
• Nobody Knows at IMDb
• Nobody Knows at Rotten Tomatoes
• Nobody Knows at Metacritic
• Nobody Knows at Box Office Mojo
• "誰も知らない (Dare mo shiranai)" (in Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 2007-07-21.