Onlookers

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1:55

Onlookers

2024

1h 12m

Documentary

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Popcornmeter

79%

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14 Reviews

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ONLOOKERS offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how we all live as observers. Traversing the country's dusty roads and tranquil rivers, we watch as elaborate painterly tableaus unfold, revealing the whimsical and at times disruptive interweaving of locals and foreigners in rest and play. Drawn to spectacle, tourists swarm to magnificent Buddhist temples, the ordered rituals of monks, and sites of dazzling natural beauty, then recede like a passing tide, leaving Laotians to continue with their daily lives. ONLOOKERS transports viewers on a sensorial journey of deep looking and listening, inviting audiences to reflect on their own modes of tourism, while asking the looming existential questions: Why do we travel? What do we seek?

Phuong Le

Guardian

Dec 2, 2025

3/5

Onlookers does provoke some interesting questions about the relationship between tourism and cinema, even if it has little new or profound insight into either topic.

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Glenn Kenny

RogerEbert.com

Feb 16, 2024

2.5/4

I myself got enough out of “Onlookers” that I don’t ultimately feel it belongs in the “For Avant-Garde Documentary Lovers” category exclusively.

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Ben Kenigsberg

New York Times

Feb 15, 2024

This is a concept in search of a movie, and an academic exercise that doesn’t give observers much to work with.

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Soham Gadre

Screen Slate

Aug 24, 2026

These tonal shifts create an emotional rhythm throughout Onlookers, forcing the viewer to be conscious of the associations between tourists and locals, as well as the relationship between cameras and performances.

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Eileen G'Sell

Hyperallergic

Oct 21, 2024

Immersive, beguiling, and productively unsettling, "Onlookers" confronts the power of the wealthy, predominantly White and Western tourist gaze to intrude on and warp its surroundings.

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Paul Emmanuel Enicola

The Movie Buff

Jul 7, 2024

B

Examines the effects of tourism in a country steeped in culture and tradition through a collage of video clips with almost no dialogue—giving the film an immersive quality that’s not only interactive, but also incisive.

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Kimi Takesue

Director

Kimi Takesue

Producer

Kimi Takesue

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Kimi Takesue

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Synopsis

ONLOOKERS offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how we all live as observers. Traversing the country's dusty roads and tranquil rivers, we watch as elaborate painterly tableaus unfold, revealing the whimsical and at times disruptive interweaving of locals and foreigners in rest and play. Drawn to spectacle, tourists swarm to magnificent Buddhist temples, the ordered rituals of monks, and sites of dazzling natural beauty, then recede like a passing tide, leaving Laotians to continue with their daily lives. ONLOOKERS transports viewers on a sensorial journey of deep looking and listening, inviting audiences to reflect on their own modes of tourism, while asking the looming existential questions: Why do we travel? What do we seek?

Director: Kimi Takesue
Producer: Kimi Takesue
Production Co: KimiKat Productions
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Feb 16, 2024, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 23, 2024
Runtime: 1h 12m

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