Nobody Knows (Dare Mo Shiranai)
Hirokazu Kore-eda established himself as a major voice in Japanese cinema with films such as Maborosi and After Life. That reputation has blossomed following the success of this film at Cannes where 14 year-old Yagira Yuya won the Best Actor Award for his portrayal of Akira, a child who must negotiate the adult world. Four kids aged between 4 and 12 are more or less abandoned by their mother and things gradually go down the tube as they try to maintain a home together. Kore-eda works with remarkable quietness, concentrating on the accumulation of detail and avoiding the melodramatic moment, assembling fragments of a domestic life picked out with a telephoto lens. The courage of childhood is that as life falls apart around you, you deal with it because that's the only option open to you. Nobody Knows constitutes a significant contribution to the Japanese cinema's remarkable tradition of films about childhood.
Reviews
“Kore-eda has an extraordinary ability to create moving tone poems out of peculiar situations; The original score by Japanese duo Gontiti is gorgeous; A rare beauty and emotional truthfulness.”
The Daily Telegraph
“In less sensitive hands, the film could easily have been a manipulative melodrama of children in danger, or else a too-cute appreciation of youthful resilience, but Kore-eda directs his dry-eyed young actors with an extraordinary mixture of tenderness and detachment, hovering between the children's point of view and that of a stricken, sympathetic adult; Your attention never slackens, and at the end you feel both heartbroken and oddly exhilarated.”
A. O. Scott, The New York Times
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When
4:30 PM Monday, 28 February
Buy Tickets Online
Greater Union - Cinema 1
Ticket Price
Full price $14
Industry $12
SPU Concession $10
As Part Of
General FeaturesAbout Nobody Knows
141 minutes35mm
Dolby SR
In Japanese with English subtitles
Print Source
Sharmill Films
Jessica Redenbach
distribution@sharmillfilms.com.au
Awards
Best Actor Cannes Film Festival 2004Festivals
London International Film Festival 2004Melbourne International Film Festival 2004
Pusan International Film Festival 2004
Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival 2004
Vienna International Film Festival 2004
About the Director
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Born in Tokyo in 1962, Hirokazu Kore-eda originally intended to pursue a writing career, but turned to filmmaking after graduating from Waseda University in 1987, making his debut feature Maboroshi in 1995. The main themes of his work include memory and loss, death and loss, and the intersection of documentary and fictional narratives.
Filmography
Nobody Knows (2004)Distance (2001)
After Life (1998)
Maboroshi (1995)