What to know
- Lisa surprised fans at the second TIFF screening of Always Lalisa after the documentary made its world premiere at the festival.
- The film follows her year away from Blackpink as she made Alter Ego, launched her independent ventures and made her acting debut in The White Lotus.
- Director Sue Kim spent nearly a year embedded with Lisa and her team, using a small crew to capture more private and unguarded moments.
- Always Lalisa opens in theatres and IMAX Oct. 12 before streaming exclusively on YouTube Premium later this year.
- Lisa founded LLOUD, her artist management company, in 2024 to oversee her solo ventures.
“I hope you guys learn about me a little bit more and it inspires you guys a little bit,” said Lalisa Manobal, a.k.a Lisa of global K-pop sensations Blackpink, surprising fans (known as Lilies) at the second screening of Sue Kim’s documentary, Always Lalisa, at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The film, which follows the Thai rapper’s year-long hiatus from the group, as she created and released her first solo album, Alter Ego, and made her acting debut in the third season of White Lotus, will have a limited run in theatres starting Oct. 12 — tickets are on sale now — then be made available on YouTube Premium later this year.
Always Lalisa lets the viewer into the gruelling world of K-pop, where hopeful young singers, rappers and dancers are put through army-like drills, classes and rehearsals with strict behavioral rules by Korean entertainment company YG Entertainment. Once selected as a member of the manufactured group, the rules and rehearsals continue tenfold.
For Lisa — whose mom changed her birthname from Pranpriya to Lalisa, which means “one who is praised,” on the recommendation of a fortune teller — making Blackpink was a dream come true, but it meant a lot of sacrifice.
When she started making her solo album, the rapper, whose singing skills had been suppressed in Blackpink, she had insecurities, which Kim’s cameras captured. But as her confidence built, largely through the patience and encouragement of her producers and co-writers, she didn’t just expand her vocal capabilities, but contributed significantly to the songwriting.
The film shows that process, including setting up her own record label, LLoud, as well as the impact harsh online comments to her solo sound and look had on her, and how hard she worked to prove them wrong with her first solo Coachella set.
Always Lalisa also shows her close relationship with her mom and stepdad, a small circle of friends, her business partner, alongside a tearful and touching segment honouring her childhood music teacher, Nok, who believed in her early on and died of cancer just after she was accepted into K-pop training school.
Documentarian Kim, who served as an executive producer on Apple TV’s docuseries K-Pop Idols, and directed 2024’s The Last of the Sea Women, said at the Q&A after the screening that when Sony Music Vision reached out to her about the project, the decision was “a no-brainer.”
“I love Lisa. I didn’t know a ton about her, but what I knew of her, I knew she was this incredible performer,” Kim said. “I loved Blackpink. Whenever I watched their music videos, I would always watch Lisa and she just had this charm and charisma that I wanted to know more about her. So when the project came to me, it was an immediate yes and it just happened very quickly.”
She explained that her filmmaking style is “cinema verité,” a natural as-they-happen style of documentary making.
“I really like to live with the subject, embed myself in their lives, keep our crews very, very small and minimal so they almost forget that we’re there. And just really watch them in their natural, day-to-day manner. And I think that tells me so much more than trying to create these very specific stage-controlled situations.”
After spending almost a year with Lisa and her team, immersed in Lisa’s life, she said they gradually got more from the K-pop star. “That’s why we’re able to see her be so natural and unguarded and vulnerable because we really were able to gain their trust over time.”
She added that “It was so lovely to see someone who is so used to being in the public eye really start to let the guard down and feel comfortable enough to be their truest selves, especially in front of the camera. I think you really see that intimacy and the trust.”
Kim ‘s Lisa schedule, which she admits was exhausting.
“The amount of travel and work and no sleep nights and she’d pull full days and do overnight flights, land, do a photo shoot, do all these things,” she relayed. “We were supposed to be there filming everything, but we are also human and not physically capable of working like this. So, it was such a privilege to be able to have access to her world.
“But it was also so physically rigorous and exhausting. And it gave me so much more admiration for what an incredible work ethic she has. We’re always really very impressed, I think, with K-idols and K-pop in terms of the incredible, incredible physically taxing aspects of their job.”
And as Kim reflected on the extraordinary pace of Lisa’s life — and the access that made the documentary possible — a surprise guest came out, Lisa herself, to share a few words about Always Lalisa and what she hoped viewers would take away from this insight into her life.
