26/07/2025
How would you survive in a world that knows nothing about you?
Everyone has that one film that etches itself into their memory. In my case, that film was Nobody Knows, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Japanese gem. To this day, I still wonder how my 10-year-old self could even begin to grasp an international film so clearly not made for someone like me. And yet, it resonated. Perhaps that’s the true mark of an absolute cinema: it goes beyond language, age, and culture through its cinematography, storytelling, and a haunting emotional core that captured something in my young, sponge-like brain.
It’s one of those rare films that alters your brain chemistry. The first time I saw it, all I remembered was that I cried in a deep, confusing sorrow. Years later, I decided to rewatch it as someone older, someone who had grown into empathy and a deeper understanding of the world’s complexities. It felt as though the film reached inside and stole my vital internal organs, leaving me with an aching emptiness that makes me want to step outside, feel the sun on my skin, and literally touch grass.
Nobody Knows follows a group of siblings — Akira, Kyoko, Shigeru, and Yuki — abandoned by their whimsical, irresponsible mother, left to fend for themselves in a tiny, cluttered Tokyo apartment. With no birth certificates or official papers, they strive to survive a life, ghosts in a bustling city, where, truly, nobody knows them. Their only connection to the outside world often feels like the clandestine trips Akira makes for groceries.
But the most devastating part of this tale is its inspiration from the real-life Sugamo child abandonment case in Japan. Knowing this transforms the film from a poignant drama into a mirror reflecting a horrifying reality; a portrayal of someone’s past, their present, and, heartbreakingly, the continued reality for countless invisible children around the world.
These are children forced to grow up too fast, denied the very essence of childhood. They are robbed of innocence, play, and security, compelled instead to become survivors. They adapt, learning to navigate a world that ignores them, driven by an instinct to simply exist. They know nothing of a normal upbringing, yet they must know how to endure, how to find food, how to care for one another in a void of adult responsibility.
The film captures this struggle with an almost documentary-like realism. It relies heavily on the children’s actions and the visuals of their isolated existence rather than an intrusive musical score. The silence is deafening, amplifying the weight of their situation, making every rustle of a plastic bag or every drip of a faucet significant. It’s a cinematographic experience told almost entirely from the children’s perspective, making the adult world outside their apartment seem vast, indifferent, and unreachable, as we see it through Yuki’s innocent, bewildered eyes and Akira’s increasingly burdened gaze.
This deliberate restraint in storytelling is what makes the film so impactful. It’s sad, yes, and undeniably depressing, but it’s never manipulative. It avoids sentimentality and refuses to force tears, allowing only the raw truth of their situation and the observation of their daily struggle to speak for themselves. Its power lies in its ability to make you feel the creeping despair and the moments of childlike joy without ever explicitly telling you what to feel. It’s a film you’ll remember. A film that changes how you see the world.
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(words and layout by 𝐇𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐞 𝐀𝐥𝐯𝐢𝐞 𝐋𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐬 | The Tradesman)
