Images of hands and feet of children are just one of many empathetic devices writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda uses to pull adult viewers into a world unknown to them, a heartbreaking world inhabited by four children trying to survive together in Tokyo, Japan.

Nobody Knows (2005), one of last year’s best movies, is based on a true story of child abandonment that shocked Tokyo. Akira, his brother Shigeru, and his two sisters Kyoko and Yuki are left to fend for themselves by their selfish, child-like mother Keiko when she decides yet another affair is more important than taking care of her children (each of whom, unsurprisingly, has a different father). Once she leaves, the film feels like a poignant dream that drops quiet but soul-shaking moments, one-by-one.

Nobody Knows is a masterful piece of visual art on a par with works by such directors as Terrence Malick (The Badlands, The New World), Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardner) and Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain). Kore-eda shares not only these craftsmen’s skill with a lens, but their passion for revealing the souls of those unknown to most of us.

There are many tender, haunting moments in this film to which words cannot do justice. What seem like everyday tasks and decision to us—receiving a bill, watering a plant, standing on a chair, holding a hand—become beautiful and profound in Kore-eda’s story of this broken family. Astonishing. Poignant. Extraordinary. The film deserves the highest praise, as does the performance of Yagira Yuya (Akira), who won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival.

To fully enter into and appreciate this film, however, you must be ready to see the world through the wondrous eyes of someone who’s been neglected by it. You must be willing to struggle with the question of why God watches tender children like these fend for themselves in Japan, Mexico, and Sudan without directly intervening. And you must be prepared to follow where your own heart leads you as you recall the ancient description of God’s wayward bride, his unfaithful people: “they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor” (Jeremiah 5:27b – 28).

I do not know what God will say to you when you watch this film. Nor do I know how my own life will change because of it. But I want to know.