OPENS Friday, Feb. 16th 2024 in U.S. Theaters: Metrograph, New York City
-Slamdance Film Festival 2023--WINNER: Honorable Mention - Breakout Features
-Cinéma du Réel 2023 - Centre Pompidou, Paris, France- Competition
-DMZ International Documentary Film Festival 2023, South Korea
-Krakow International Film Festival 2023, Poland
-RIDM-Montreal International Documentary Film Festival 2023, Canada
-Prismatic Ground 2023, BAM-Brooklyn
-Asian American International Film Festival 2023, NYC
-San Diego Asian Film Festival 2023
-Festival Film Dokumenter 2023, Indonesia
-So Far, So Close: Cinemas from Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam 2024, France
-Amherst Cinema-Bellwether Series, MA
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?
Social Media
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram @onlookersfilm
SELECT CREDITS:
Director and Producer: Kimi Takesue
Cinematography by: Kimi Takesue
Co-Producers: Richard Beenen, Sophie Luo
Consulting Producers: Sara Archambault, Karin Chien
Sound: Kimi Takesue
Edited by: Kimi Takesue
Colorist: Christopher DiBerardino
Supervising Sound Editor & Re-Recording Mixer: Tom Efinger
Sound Editor: Abigail Savage
Marketing & Distribution Coordinator: Aderet Fishbane
SUPPORT & FUNDING FROM:
Bogliasco Foundation
Chicken and Egg Pictures
The Corporation of Yaddo
MacDowell
Marblehouse
New York State Council on the Arts
Rutgers University - Newark
Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program