Invisible People

*Invisible People* is an experimental documentary by artist and filmmaker Alisa Berger, who grew up in Essen. The film premiered at the Museum Folkwang in October 2025 and has since been touring select German theaters.

*Invisible People* explores Japanese Butoh dance, also known as the “Dance of Darkness.” This avant-garde form of expressive dance emerged in Japan after World War II and moves between rebellion, ritual, and meditation. The film features striking portraits of Butoh masters and performers—including Yoshito Ōno, son of Butoh co-founder Kazuo Ōno, who passed away during filming. 

In *Invisible People*, Berger weaves personal experiences with poetic and philosophical texts by Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata. Taking her father’s death as a starting point, the director embarks on a cinematic search for the invisible—for moments, people, and movements that unfold between life and death, visibility and memory.
“The film focuses on the hidden,” says Alisa Berger. “I wanted to create a trance-like experience that makes the invisible tangible—that which exists between things.” 

Alisa Berger, born in 1987 in Makhachkala (Republic of Dagestan), grew up in Lviv (Ukraine) and later in Essen. She studied film and visual arts at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM), at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, and at the renowned Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains in France. From 2018 to 2022, she lived in Tokyo, where she researched and practiced Butoh dance. 

Berger is considered one of the most exciting young voices in experimental film in Germany. She was nominated for the Max Ophüls Prize and the FIRST STEPS Award, and in 2023 she received the Studio Collector Prize from Isabelle & Jean-Conrad Lemaître at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Her works have been shown at venues including the Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf , HMKV Dortmund, and Kindl Berlin, as well as at festivals such as the Berlinale, IDFA, CPH:DOX, and Hot Docs. 

With *Invisible People*, Alisa Berger presents a multi-layered portrait of a dance that defies clear explanation—and is, at the same time, a deeply personal film about farewell, transformation, and carrying on in the invisible. 

"Total immersion" Filmdienst

"...raw, erotic, painful, and uncompromising" Famos Magazine

“On the electrifying existentialism of performance art” Film plus Kritik