Nobody Knows

[pegkerr]

Last night the girls and I watched a movie that kiramartin recommended, Nobody Knows, which is still haunting me a day later. It is a Japanese movie, a fictionalization of a story that caused a great scandal in that country in 1988. A single mother with four children with four different fathers abandoned them in Tokyo apartment. The only child that the landlords knew about, who was allowed to go outside, was the twelve year old boy, who cared for his half-siblings when his mother disappeared. No one knew about them: the births of the three "hidden" children were unregistered, and none of them went to school. The children lived alone for six months, with the oldest struggling to keep the younger ones fed and safe, but gradually their utilities were shut off, and their struggle became truly grim, until the final tragedy.

This is really a haunting film. The director used nonprofessional children actors, and the performances he coaxed from them was so amazing that the twelve year old won the Cannes Award for best actor. As one critic notes, you really do come to love these children, and long to know what happens to them after the last frozen frame (was that last freeze frame a reference to The 400 Blows, perhaps?)

Does anyone know the fate, after they were discovered, of the four abandoned children of Nishi-Sugamo?

Highly recommended.

Edited to add: You can see the trailer here (at the top of the frame). It gives a good sense of what I am talking about.

Comments

[kokopoko.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you and I unfortunately share a messed up childhood. Just reading about this movie is tough.