Named one of the best documentaries of 2024 by The New York Times, Kimi Takesue’s ONLOOKERS offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how people live as observers. The film traverses the country’s dusty roads and tranquil rivers, unfolding elaborate painterly tableaus and 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 the people of Laos to continue with their daily lives. Takesue transports viewers on a sensorial journey of deep looking and listening, inviting audiences to reflect on their own modes of tourism, their reasons for traveling, and what they hope to find in the process.

Part of the World Documentaries Today series as a part of Films at the Whitney.

2023 | Directed by Kimi Takesue | United States | 72 minutes | Lao and English

Location: Humanities Quadrangle L01 (320 York St., New Haven, CT 06511)

Free and open to the public!

Presented by the Whitney Humanities Center.