Alisa Berger – RAPTURE I – VISIT

Videostill from Alisa Berger, RAPTURE I - VISIT, 2024, 18:22 min., video, 4K  © Alisa Berger – Le Fresnoy – Studio national – FORTIS FEM FILM – 2024. All rights reserved

RAPTURE I - VISIT follows Ukrainian Vogue dancer Marko as he emotionally confronts his abandoned and inaccessible apartment in Donbas, Ukraine, a region affected by ten years of war. The apartment is recreated using a 3D scan of original photographs, offering a digital reconquest of the space as Marko visits it through VR for the first time since 2018. The video offers a powerful reflection on displacement, raising questions about recovery and loss in the face of war, and the possibilities and limitations of technology, as well as its ultimate emotional impact.

This film is part of the multimedia diptych RAPTURE, consisting of the short film RAPTURE I - VISIT and the VR 360 film RAPTURE II - PORTAL.  

 

Alisa Berger was born in 1987 in Makhachkala, Republic of Dagestan, and raised in Lviv, Ukraine and later Essen, Germany. She studied film and fine arts at the Academy of Media Art Cologne (KHM), the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Bogotá and Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains. Between 2018 and 2022 she lived in Tokyo and studied Butoh performance.

She was nominated for the Max Ophüls Prize and the FIRST STEPS Award and received the Studio Collector Prize of Isabelle & Jean-Conrad Lemaître at Jeu de Paume in 2023. Her works have been shown at Eye Filmmuseum, Jeu de Paume, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, CWB Paris, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, HMKV Dortmund and Kindl Berlin, as well as at Berlinale, IDFA, CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, among others. Her first-ever VR installation RAPTURE, premiered at Berlinale Forum Expanded and IDFA Doclab and was awarded the Best Immersive Film Award at One World Festival 2025.

Since 2011 she has collaborated with Lena Ditte Nissen under the name bergernissen. She is co-founder of the international film production company FORTIS FEM FILM, which dedicates its work to increasing the visibility of women and their stories in film. Additionally, Berger works as a DJ and hosts the monthly show Tripping.