Nobody Gets to Know Abandoned Children in Hirokazu Kore-eda's Nobody Knows

TORONTO--When director Hirokazu Kore-eda called Japan to tell his 14-year-old star that he'd won the best-actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance in Nobody Knows, Yí»ya Yagira didn't quite believe it.

"He said, 'Are you sure I'm supposed to get this award?' And then he said 'Okay.' "

Kore-eda laughs at the memory. Although he's speaking through a translator, the director's affection for his young cast is obvious in his smiles whenever he mentions them. "I still see them all the time," he says, laughing again.

In Toronto for the film's North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Kore-eda (who also directed Maborosi and After Life) is also clearly delighted to be talking about a film that took him more than 15 years to make. Asked why it took so long, Kore-eda flashes a not-so-happy smile. "I think the truth is that because it was deemed dark it took 15 years for a producer to materialize with the money."

Nobody Knows (which opens Friday [February 18]) was inspired by a true story known in Japan as "the affair of the four abandoned children of Nishi-Sugamo". The real "affair" took place in 1988. A mother abandoned her four children--each of whom had a different father and three of whom did not legally exist since their births had never been registered. With almost no money, they fended for themselves for six months.

Kore-eda explains that although the Japanese media focused on the mother, what fascinated him was the resilience of the children. "At the time of the incident, it was all over the talk shows and it was about the tragedy of the children and how terrible the mother is. But there was just a tiny little story in the paper once the older girl--she was 10--had entered some kind of state foster care. And there was one quote that said, 'My brother was always so sweet to us.' And with that one single comment, my heart was deeply affected. Clearly there had been a life among these siblings that was much more complex than just kind of 'the poor abandoned children'."

Kore-eda said that once he was caught up in the story, he couldn't bring himself to abandon it--no matter how frustrating the quest for funding became. "Even though it is a fictionalized account, in my research what I really learned about the oldest boy I really, really came to care for him, and I just couldn't somehow abandon him. I wanted to send him out into the world and at the same time kind of shelter and protect him."

Filmed primarily in and around a single, small apartment, the film was heavily improvised because Kore-eda built his movie around children with no performing experience. "In a sense, I used their lack of experience. I never showed them the script in advance. I just kind of whispered directions to them on the set or on the location and I think that that was able to get really natural performances out of them."

For the infamous mother, Kore-eda cast You, a well-known, much-loved Japanese celebrity. A singer (with Fairchild), magazine columnist, and frequent talk-show guest, she has fame and a bubbly, childlike persona that made it harder for audiences to easily demonize her. You bonded with the children to the point where Kore-eda has referred to her as a second director.

To keep things simple for his young cast, Kore-eda also decided to tell a lot of his story without dialogue. "I would say that once the mom leaves, I really wanted to use something other than dialogue or language to convey their emotions to the audience. I'm really trying to create a space where the audience can relate to the children's emotional state without the use of dialogue. I think my main approach in the second half was...to really focus on their hands and the way that their hands express various emotions of happiness or sadness."

The director admits he was almost as surprised about the award from Cannes as was his young star--who was only 12 when he started work on the film. "What I asked of them was that they behave in a way that it looked like they just naturally lived in that apartment. So what I was really asking from them was not to act. So I suppose some part of me wondered whether it was appropriate for him to win an award for acting. But I think that altogether they managed to create such a special little family, so I'm very, very happy. It was a really important and moving time for all of us, myself and for the children, and I can only hope that it will be a positive thing in their lives."

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