Nobody Knows (film)
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| Nobody Knows | |
|---|---|
 Nobody Knows film poster |
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| Directed by | Hirokazu Koreeda |
| Produced by | Hirokazu Koreeda |
| Written by | Hirokazu Koreeda |
| Starring | Yûya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura |
| Distributed by | IFC Films (USA) |
| Release date(s) |  August 7, 2004 September 30, 2004 October 21, 2004 November 10, 2004 |
| Running time | 141 min. |
| Language | Japanese |
| IMDb profile | |
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 in on their own.
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[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Yûya Yagira | Akira |
| Ayu Kitaura | Kyoko |
| 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 |
[edit] 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, but because none of the five children officially existed (she had not registered the births of any of them, thus none of them went to school), she wrapped the body up in some plastic sheets with some deodorizer and hid it in a closet.
When she left her children to live with her new lover, the oldest boy was around 14, and he had three younger sisters, aged 7, 3 and 2.
The older boy took to bringing over two friends ("A" and "B" in the report) he'd made, but these two other 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 up, ultimately killing her.
The oldest son and friend (A) packed the body up and took it to some mountains nearby, and buried it in a shallow grave. This was in April 1988.
In July of that year the landlord finally 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 corpse that 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; and the mother, seeing this on the news, wondered if it was all about 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). There were criminal charges against him which were later dropped. The children's true names were never released to the media.
The mother spent 3 years in prison with an additional 4 years of probation after release. She eventually regained custody of her two surviving daughters following her release.
[edit] 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:
- Yûya, 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.
[edit] Awards
The movie was Japan's entry for the Academy Awards Foreign Language Film. Fourteen-year-old Yûya Yagira, who plays as Akira, won "Best Actor Award" at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Japanese TV personality You plays his mother.
