Kore-eda with and against Sartre: Existential Education in Nobody Knows

This article makes a case for Hirokazu Kore-eda as an existential director. By reading his film Nobody Knows (2004) against Sartre's anti-essentialist existentialism, I will show that the film disabuses us of several Sartrean doctrines and reorients us towards an existential education in Kore-eda's cinema. Contrasting the despair and disappearance of Keiko, a Sartrean existentialist heroine par excellence, with the development of Akira, Nobody Knows moves us away from the freedom and transcendence in Sartrean existentialism and emphasises the formation of the self and the growth in self-knowledge through navigating the division between existence and essence. Portrayed by suggestive dialogue, tactile close-ups, and spontaneous performances, this existential education is advanced through a series of mirror images that invite comparison and reflection. The film peaks in a tragic wisdom before death and opens the transformed self to community.