Tragic but I'd take the watered down, fictionalised version of the actual events any day.

It's so good that I'd consider never watching it again.

A minor itch: The film never mentions where Child C is.
Oh well, I guess Nobody Knows.

2nd Letterboxd Festival - Film 1

Damn you, Hirokazu Koreeda, for making this film. Now I won't be able to get these absolutely heartbreaking scenes out of my mind.

No... I'm not really «damning» the director. He's made a tremendous film. The way he handled the children is almost beyond comparison, I think its some of the best child performances I have ever seen. Koreeda also manages to show us the small moments of joy that children are able to experience even in the darkest of situations.

What really worries me is that a real-life incident in Tokyo inspired Koreeda to make this film. I guess reality is more cruel than fiction - few could have invented this story.

I had something in my eye and my throat, I swear...

Tragic but I'd take the watered down, fictionalised version of the actual events any day.

It's so good that I'd consider never watching it again.

A minor itch: The film never mentions where Child C is.
Oh well, I guess Nobody Knows.

"Nobody Knows values honesty over style. With very little score and largely improvised performances captured through obscured cameras, the film mostly concerns itself with watching its four central child characters grow one year older in an enclosed, unsupervised space without the structure or discipline of adult influence. While sometimes exhaustingly quiet & unrushed, it’s a fascinating achievement in form & authenticity."

Read the full review here.

Kore-eda creates a sense of intimacy within the apartment. He shoots close to the kids (there's no room to get further away), and underlines their claustrophobic imprisonment. They like one another, they have some toys, they get more or less enough to eat, usually less. One day Akira even takes their shoes out of a closet and lets them put them on, and takes them outside for a walk in the great free wide open world, which is so indifferent to them.

Nobody knows is more matter-of-fact, more realistic, in suggesting the slow progress of time, the cold winter followed by the hot summer days, the desperation growing behind Akira's cautious expression. The fact that he doesn't crank up the energy with manufactured emergencies makes the impending danger more dramatic: This cannot go on, and it is going to end badly.

This is the first Koreeda that I've seen where I would consider not watching it again.

Heartbreaking story of Akira, Kyōko, Yuki, and Shigeru who've been forced to fend for themselves without their callous mother.

The bare story has enough material to make you care about the characters, but in the hands of Hirokazu Koreeda who clearly cares about the power and revelatory nature of little moments in cinema, it turns into something special.

For a film that has little dialogue and full of children actors, this was extremely well acted. The film doesn't just present a harrowing story but uplifting, even a joyful one at times. It can't be an easy job to craft a film that exudes authenticity as much as Nobody Knows does, but the actors and Koreeda somehow pulled it off.

The only criticism I can think of is the film's length, although it didn't bother me as much as it seems to have bothered other people.

dont watch this unless u want to die

I've been trying to write a review for the past hour and I'm not getting anywhere in being articulate so here's my thoughts, bullet-point style:

- feels repetitious and kinda one-note.

- the cutesy guitar-pluck soundtrack is used way too often, and its constant use inadvertently distracts from the dramatic weight of some moments. Especially at the climax, instead of feeling emotional I instead just felt relieved that they were using different music. Had the score been used more sparingly, the sudden aural tone-shift would've been more effective.

- the performances and cinematography were all great, and the way the film demonstrates the passage of time is very well done.

- During the screening I laughed at a plant falling onto the ground. I don't know why, I just did.