The Spectacle
2025 · 20m · Netherlands
Directed by Yasmin van Dorp
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic
A fixed-camera observation of crowds at stunning European nature sites, where tourists jockey to direct each other's photos — manufacturing solitude for the perfect shot.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's going to read this as a trite critique of Instagram culture, but van Dorp's actually making something weirder—a deadpan inversion where the spectacle *is* the documentary, and we're watching people perform authenticity so hard it circles back to genuine. It's antagonistic in the best way.
The fixed camera is the entire argument here, and van Dorp understands that discipline completely—refusing montage or dramatic intervention lets the essay emerge through pure observation, situating the work in a lineage of Kiarostami and late Wiseman where form becomes philosophy.
The decision to hold on the crowd's orchestrated chaos without cutting away is the move that makes this work—most filmmakers would punctuate it with reaction shots or landscape reprieve, but van Dorp trusts the fixed frame to turn awkwardness into something almost unbearable and true.
Reviews
By securing her camera on a stick in the soil and letting it capture the herds, Dutch filmmaker Yasmin van Dorp regales us with the wonders of the world, while we little armies of ants jockey for position in front of one another's phones. Undoubtedly, the stunning views are inspiring.