"Kore-eda effortlessly and earnestly captures incredible performances from child actors and this one’s a heartbreaker."
Tara Judah, Watershed Cinema Producer

Based on a true story, Kore-eda’s highly acclaimed Nobody Knows charts the abandonment by their mother and slow descent into feral degradation of four children in a small Tokyo apartment.

Four siblings live happily with their mother in a small apartment in Tokyo. In fact, the children all have different fathers, have never been to school and the very existence of three of them has been hidden from the landlord. So when one day the mother leaves behind a little money and a note, charging her oldest boy to look after the others, so begins the children’s odyssey, a journey that might lead them to where? Nobody knows...

Given such a tragic premise, it’s uncanny how Kore-eda discreetly breaks your heart without ever seeming to yank on the heartstrings. And Yuya Yagira’s stunning lead performance as 12-year-old Akita, forced to assume parental responsibility at the expense of his own childhood, is one of cinema’s great child performances - one that saw him become the youngest ever winner of the best actor award at Cannes.

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