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?

LONGER SYNOPSIS

ONLOOKERS explores the paradox of travel: Why do people fly thousands of miles from home to lounge in a Laotian guest house sipping smoothies while watching re-runs of the TV show “Friends”? Why do we climb to the top of a colossal mountain just to snap selfies, rather than enjoy the extraordinary view? We are present, but absent. Looking, but not seeing.

 With wit and a gentle eye for social critique, ONLOOKERS observes Western backpackers and tour groups from East Asia descend upon Laos, a small socialist 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.

ONLOOKERS 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 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?

Of the many contrasts that structure the film, we return, again and again to the ordered rituals of Buddhist monks--the sweeping and gardening, chanting and praying. Dressed in vibrant saffron robes, the monks become the fetishized symbols of Laotian culture for the tourist, and the ultimate photo-op. ONLOOKERS deviates from the tourist path to find small, quotidian moments of everyday life in Laos that might easily be overlooked: young girls playfully pose as models while collecting water at the river’s edge; at the school playground a pudgy boy eats chips while coyly smiling at the camera; a group of Laotian women faithfully gather at the side of the road at dawn waiting to offer alms to the passing monks.

At the heart of ONLOOKERS is the quiet presence, the warmth, and the curiosity of the filmmaker. She, too, is an onlooker, tourist, and photographer-looking at people looking—and documenting in formal tableaux the experience of travel with its fluctuating moments of uncertainty, intrusiveness, exhilaration, fatigue, disappointment, absurdity, and surprise.

As the journey wears on and the tourists begin to tire, we finally see Laotians engage in their own recreation and fun: children chase each other in a bouncy castle at a carnival, old men play a game of bocce at dusk, a crowd gathers to cheer on its favorite team at the boat race. In the end, we are all looking for ways to escape, to play, and to feel alive together.