What does it look like when a little girl in Thailand grows up to become one of the world’s most bankable stars? Lalisa Manobal, better known as Lisa of Blackpink, moved to Korea in 2011 to chase her K-pop dreams, back when the music hadn’t yet gone global. There wasn’t a path to follow to this level of superstardom, not yet, and not from Thailand.
“Always Lalisa” had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 11. The documentary reveals how its glittering subject spent a year away from the gilded cage of Blackpink, the reigning queens of K-pop, to explore a world of creative freedom by recording and touring her solo work.
“I finally get to live my life,” Lisa says in the doc. Blackpink fans, or Blinks, know that Lisa auditioned for South Korea’s YG Entertainment as a young teen in Thailand before moving to there to spend years in the K-pop trainee system, an intensely competitive kind of performance boot camp.
“I didn’t dare speak up or express my thoughts,” she says in the film, “and I had been living like that since I was 14.” Describing the monthly performance tapes she submitted to bosses for review during those years — and the feedback — she breaks down weeping.
K-pop secrets revealed
“She let us into every inner sanctum of her world,” says the film’s director, Sue Kim. “We’re showing things that people have never seen before in the life of a K-pop idol that’s currently huge and still working.”
For those raised on the free and open hot mess of Western celebrity culture who may be less aware of the K-pop trainee system, it may go underappreciated just how much Korean entertainers, and their behaviour, can be under lock and key.
“In K-pop culture, we can’t date,” Lisa explains in the doc. “If you’re seeing someone and you get caught by paparazzi, your popularity drops. When I was younger, I had a few relationships, but we had to hide when we’re dating. I didn’t want my dating to be the thing that hurts Blackpink’s popularity.”
Seamlessly switching between English, Thai and Korean throughout the film, Lisa divulges that “Dream,” from her 2025 solo album, “Alter Ego,” was written about one of those clandestine relationships and that she sought the person’s approval before releasing the song. That person said it was fine as long as fans didn’t sleuth their identity, Lisa reveals, laughing. “They thought they figured it out, but I don’t think so.”
And people talk. Fandom in the K-pop world is fostered through social media (Lisa has 106 million followers on Instagram, while Blackpink has the most-subscribed artist channel on YouTube) and regular meet and greets.
“On zero sleep, she would show up, ready to share energy with her fans because that’s what she looked forward to, that’s what she felt they deserve,” Kim says. “I’ve seen firsthand how transformative that relationship between an idol and their fans can be. I don’t think I knew how destructive and toxic some of the fandom can be until I started working on this with Lisa. I was shocked.”
Kim brings this into the doc by showing real online comments directed at Lisa that contain words like “talentless,” “gold digger,” “disgusting” and “Thai dog.”
“It’s as if they search for the words that will cut my soul the deepest,” Lisa says in the film. “I’m a human being who works hard for what I love. Why is it not enough for them?”
Public vs. private
What is the role of an artist-driven documentary in today’s world, where celebrities can livestream from their phones at any time? “Always Lalisa” shows the vast gulf between what humans do when we gather in person, such as at the Coachella festival, where a sea of people partakes in Lisa’s spectacle of a show, versus what we do online, tapping out eye-watering, targeted comments.
Those comments often dehumanize people. This film, a considered and cohesive narrative of one year of her life, rehumanizes Lisa.
During Lisa’s year of being documented, a tape from her trainee days gets leaked, showing her, along with other Blackpink members, practicing how to rap by covering English-language songs that include the n-word.
As these events unfold, the audience is privy to behind-the-scenes machinations, at least between Lisa and her own management team, if not YG Entertainment, the company that continues to manage Blackpink.
“Everybody knows what happened online,” Kim says. “And now people will see what Lisa herself has to say about it.”
And what does Lisa think of the finished film?
“She said she was so busy going through those experiences and in such a tunnel of doing the work that being able to see her life as a viewer gave her so much more appreciation for what she went through,” Kim says.
“She was able to appreciate the insanity of that year.”
