Named one of “The Best Documentaries of 2024” by The New York Times | HONORABLE MENTION, BREAKOUT FEATURES - Slamdance Film Festival | “I also loved ONLOOKERS, Kimi Takesue’s unusual film about tourism in Laos…here we are as viewers, watching people be watched. So who is the real onlooker?”- Alissa Wilkinson, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tourism / Tourism Studies • Travel • Anthropology • Ethnographic Filmmaking • Globalization • Sustainability • Immersive Sensory Ethnography • Politics of “Slowing Down” • Laos • Cross-Cultural Encounters • Buddhist Studies • Cultural Studies • Sociology • Spectatorship
Date of Completion: 2023 | Run Time: 72 minutes | Language: English | Captions: Yes | Director: Kimi Takesue | Producer: Kimi Takesue | Co-Producers: Richard Beenen & Sophie Luo | Camera and Editing: Kimi Takesue | Consulting Producers: Karin Chien & Sara Archambault
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 we all live as observers. With wit and a gentle eye for social critique, ONLOOKERS observes Western backpackers and tour groups from East Asia descending upon Laos, a small country in Southeast Asia economically dependent on international tourism. Once the most heavily bombed country in the world during the Vietnam War, Laos is now a cheap destination for international travelers. The film tracks the intricate choreography of travel, and the power imbalances at play, as tourists and locals intermingle, vie for space, and move on parallel tracks without contact, oblivious to one another.
Compelling questions animate the film: What is the difference between a tourist and a traveler? Between participant and onlooker? Where does curiosity cross into intrusion? What activities give our lives meaning? How does a place become a commodity? Is sustainable, respectful cross-cultural travel even possible? How much of tourist life involves waiting: arrivals and departures, boredom and cellphones?
And why, finally, do we travel? What are we looking for?
The New York Times | Alissa Wilkinson
FEATURED in the NYTimes: "The Best Documentaries of 2024, So Far"
“I also loved ONLOOKERS, Kimi Takesue’s unusual film about tourism in Laos…here we are as viewers, watching people be watched. So who is the real onlooker?”
Yale University | Marc Francis
“ONLOOKERS follows in the traditions of observational documentary and slow cinema, and by uniting the two, offers a unique meditation on the quotidian frictions between local and tourist life in Laos. Takesue brings equal amounts of curiosity, wit, heart, and critique to her visually wondrous documentary.”
Film Comment | Michael Sicinski
"Revelatory…Onlookers provides a piercing and ironic examination of seemingly benevolent cultural consumption... A wry and at times uproarious ethnographic work."
Film Threat | Benjamin Franz
"If you’re looking for a new kind of travel film, this is for you."
Filmmaker Magazine | A.E. Hunt
"A surprisingly funny observational documentary ...she's not merely reversing too-common gazes or commenting on tourism's cannibalization of a place...Onlookers is instead the pithy result of her long look at a place and its tourism from untrodden angles. She is able to look at travel critically as well as see its potential."
Hyperallergic | Eileen G’Sell
"Immersive, beguiling and productively unsettling...the film is an exercise in the power of watching and listening.”
Asian Arts Alliance, The AMP | Delaney Chieyen Holton
“Takesue’s unnarrated durational engagement lets each moment unfold in its full complexity, softening and rehumanizing the critical eye of the viewer, who might otherwise mistake themselves as apart from and above the tourists on screen.”
Truth Dig | Edward Frumkin
"The scenes appear as motion postcards sedately unspooling life's minutiae...“Onlookers” peels back the layers of commodified culture to reveal the deep and enduring pleasures of travel."
Cinema Daily | Mako Fukata
“A profound exploration of the transformative power of embracing the unfamiliar and finding beauty in the ordinary, wherever one may be.”
Reverse Shot | Natalia Keogan
“[Takesue’s] films argue that our ability to patiently observe is all that stands in the way of personal enlightenment and cross-cultural connection.”
Prismatic Ground, Brooklyn Academy of Music | Inney Prakash
“Through a series of expertly framed static takes (and meticulous sound design), we’re free to let our senses wander between the sometimes humorous, sometimes off putting, and always porous borders between seen and seer.”
The Moveable Fest | Stephen Saito
"Enchanting...Takesue walks a fine line allowing for one to judge for themselves what they are seeing while gently injecting her own sense of discovery and good humor in curating the experience."
The Playlist | Charles Barfield
"Visually-stunning! ....showcases how tourism can have an effect on a country and its local people."
Hammer to Nail | Jonathan Marlowe
"Exquisite care to the picture and sound....Nearly all the roles associated with the making of the film are occupied by the filmmaker (who, by this point, has similarly established an immediate expectation of worthiness with anything to which her name is attached)."
Modern Times Review | Steve Rickinson
"Compelling! ...Through a series of consistent wide shots, the camera never moving, to a sound tableau that picks up the most subtle touristic rustling…Onlookers not only grabs your gaze almost subconsciously, but it also elicits nostalgia and self-reflection of one's own such experiences."
Asian Movie Pulse | Marina Richter
“Onlookers motivates the viewers to ask themselves a question: why do we travel the way we do, with eyes wide shut?"
Seen Magazine | Dessane Lopez Cassell
“Kimi Takesue lays bare the performative nature of tourism, in all its graceless glory.”
Film Festival Today | Christopher Llewellyn Reed
“Mesmerizes…a cross between a travelogue and a tone poem.”
The New York Sun | Mario Naves
“Ravishing....There’s a strong hint of the theater to the director’s machinations and, with that, a sharp eye for composition and choreography....At moments, one is reminded of the expansive organizational facility of Pieter Brueghel.”
Metrograph Journal | Ari-Duong Nguyen
"Sublime...Takesue's documentary is an excursion that reveals surprises at every checkpoint."
AWARDS
Honorable Mention, Breakout Features | Slamdance Film Festival
FESTIVALS
Cinéma du Réel
Slamdance Film Festival
Krakow International Film Festival
DMZ International Documentary Film Festival
RIDM Montréal International Documentary Film Festival
Prismatic Ground Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music
Asian American International Film Festival
Transmutación Cine Contemporáneo
Blue Chair International Film Festival
Festival Film Dokumenter
San Diego Asian Film Festival
Si Loin Si Proche: Cinema of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
SCREENINGS
Amherst Cinema
Asian Film Archive
Cornell Cinema Doc Spots
Metrograph NYC
New School for Social Research
Images Cinema Lightbox Film Series
Pratt University
Rhode Island School of Design
Texas A&M University
Yale University
Director, Producer, Cinematographer and Editor of ONLOOKERS
Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened widely at festivals and museums internationally including Sundance, Locarno, Rotterdam, New Directors/New Films, SXSW, CPH:DOX, Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Modern Art and have aired/streamed on PBS, IFC, the Sundance Channel and the Criterion Channel. Many of Takesue’s films explore the complex dynamics of cross-cultural encounters and representations. She is the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, as well as the “Chicken and Egg Award” from Chicken and Egg Pictures honoring women filmmakers who’ve made a significant contribution to the documentary field.
Takesue has been honored with a full retrospective on the illustrious Criterion Channel as well as a 2026 retrospective at Cornell University and Cornell Cinema. In 2025, Takesue had her first mid-career retrospective in Asia at the Asian Film Archive in Singapore and NTU-Center for Contemporary Art.
Takesue’s recent documentary ONLOOKERS (2023)--an immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos— was named one of the Best Documentaries of 2024 by Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times. Takesue’s films have been reviewed in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Nation, Variety, Film Comment, Hyperallergic, Bomb Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal among others. She has been a frequent guest speaker and artist in residence at numerous colleges and universities including Yale University, Brown University, Texas A&M, Williams College, Temple, Emerson, and Vanderbilt among many others. Takesue is Professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University-Newark.
Expertise
"Kimi is a fabulous speaker: charismatic, warm, insightful and vulnerable. The Q&A went on for 90 minutes before the venue forced us to shut it down (and even then, students lined up for a full 30 minutes afterwards to keep talking with her)! “
--Mary Posatko, Assistant Professor and Head of Documentary Filmmaking, Department of Theatre, Television and Film, SDSU
“Few filmmakers can field questions from an audience with such generosity and eloquence. The audience walked away thinking about the fruitful workings of ambivalence and contradiction that can come with being both a tourist in and documentarian of foreign topographies.”
-Marc Francis, Manager of Film Programming, Yale University
“Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers screened to a full house at Yale. Takesue helped the audience—a mix of Yale students and the New Haven community—understand both her filmmaking process and the larger context of being an observer in the world. It was an ideal and memorable conclusion to our global documentaries series.”
-Diane Berrett Brown, Deputy Director, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University
“Kimi Takesue's residency at Texas A&M had deep and meaningful impacts on our students and community. The undergraduate and graduate students who took part in her many classroom visits reported the engagement had inspired them in their creative work and their scholarship--to make more challenging and exciting films, and to incorporate filmmaking into their research projects in new and different ways. In addition, Prof. Takesue was extremely generous with her time and energy at public screenings and talkbacks; where she provided engaging insights into her creative process, aesthetic philosophy, and personal experience. Kimi Takesue brought work of exceptional quality and beauty to our community, and we are grateful to have hosted her.”
-James Ball, Associate Dean for Industry and Community Engagement, Texas A&M University
“Kimi spent a day with our documentary students (both undergraduate and graduate-level). Kimi managed to assess them at lightning speed, to meet them where they were, to educate them and most importantly, to inspire them. She gave specific, excellent feedback to each group while pulling the threads together into an overarching Masterclass on technique, style, personal voice, and the critical importance of knowing your themes and your why. The students lined up for an hour after class to ask for more feedback, to ask follow-up questions, and to express their gratitude to her.”
--Mary Posatko, Assistant Professor and Head of Documentary Filmmaking, Department of Theatre, Television and Film, SDSU
Speaking History
Kimi has had FILM RETROSPECTIVES at:
-Cornell Cinema & Cornell University
-Asian Film Archive, Singapore
-Metrograph Channel
-Criterion Channel
Kimi has been an ARTIST IN RESIDENCE at:
-Texas A&M University
-San Diego State University
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES WHERE I HAVE SPOKEN (selected):
-Yale University
-Brown University
-Cornell University
-Vanderbilt University
-Texas A&M University
-Williams College
-Emerson College
-Temple University
-San Diego State University
-Pratt University
-School of Visual Art
-Mount Holyoke College