Nobody Knows

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Yagira's performance is so extraordinary, it won him the best actor prize at the 2004 Cannes film festival.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

The film, winsome and tragic at once and finely attuned to the rhythms of childhood, always seems quite close to real life.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Nobody Knows, by the often excellent Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, is one of those special movies that can give us a new way of seeing.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

[The children's] remarkable lack of self-consciousness ... and Kore-eda's quasi-documentary style give this movie a stunning credibility.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It's a quietly powerful work, pulsing with gentle humor and a gripping sense of imminent calamity and dread.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Beautiful, elevating and achingly sad.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Moves at a stately pace; it's a long film, to boot. But there's real drama and pathos in the story, in the blend of matter-of-factness and potential catastrophe, in the depiction of innocence imperiled.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The kids in Nobody Knows are most decidedly not crazy, and we come to care for them to an almost excruciating degree.

Slate David Edelstein

Pure and universal.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Apart from a singer named You who plays Keiko, the members of the cast are non-professionals. You may find that hard to believe when you see this astonishing film, as I hope you will.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Unfolds with such leisurely, terrible beauty, it takes a while to realize that what we are witnessing is the children's long slide into beggary, exacerbated by the slow torture of faint hope.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Not for the faint of heart, though it has no scenes of overt violence, and barely a tear is shed. It is also strangely thrilling, not only because of the quiet assurance of Mr. Kore-eda's direction, but also because of his alert, humane sense of sympathy.

Chicago Reader Jim Healy

Yuya Yagira, winner of the best actor award at Cannes this year, is superb as the protective eldest child; he and his other nonprofessional costars are quietly heartbreaking.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Nobody Knows is the rare film that successfully tells its tale of childhood from the children’s point of view.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

You won't forget Nobody Knows, the quietly harrowing tale of four abandoned Japanese children.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Spare and elegant and harrowing, it's an ode to childhood trust being stretched until it snaps.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Kore-eda expresses the terror of the kids' predicament with a touch that's equally tender and dispassionate.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Kore-eda presents the deeply moving story in a documentary style that is both gentle and compelling.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There are moments in Yagira's performance that will break your heart.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

Nothing short of mesmerizing.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

There is not much progress in the film: actions are repeated and repeated...Yet the film is sustained--and, for the most part, well sustained--by the children.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Kore-eda doesn't create the simultaneous sense of being destroyed and exalted that the greatest humanist movies do, but he's stayed true to his title.

Variety Derek Elley

Kore-eda sketches the inner, spiritual and emotional lives of the children with subtlety and sensitivity, delivering the goods after a seemingly directionless first half.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

I certainly came out of Nobody Knows feeling numb; only later, reflecting on the fact that the movie was inspired by a true story, did it occur to me that the numbness could have been deliberate, and that what suffused this picture was a mist of anger.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

It's a heart-sundering vision of preadolescent helplessness that rivals passages of "Landscape in the Mist" and "Ponette."

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Loosely structured around four seasons, Nobody Knows unfolds in a long series of episodes that slowly progress from lightly comic to bracingly sad as the situation deteriorates.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda's most accessible film to date is also his most wrenching.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

A beautiful but depressing film.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Luminous, melancholy and ultimately heartbreaking.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Excellent, troubling social commentary based on a true story.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Beguiling but long-winded.