Invisible Touch stages a series of everyday tantrums by a seven-year-old Norwegian child named Luka. These outbursts unfold in a range of public and private spaces—a restaurant, a museum, a beach, a hotel room, a cabin, and the home. “Luka” doesn’t want to do what their parents say, refuses to go to bed, to come home, to eat… The real source of these rages is hard to discern, as is the best way for a parent to respond to them.

A child’s tantrum is normally treated as an interruption, a disturbance of family routine or public space—something to be ignored. In this film, the tantrum instead becomes the whole focus: a ritual of refusal and negotiation, which becomes only more mysterious through its inevitable repetition. Inspired by Brechtian theatre techniques, Luka and their parent are portrayed across the film by three different sets of actors. The shifts between the pairs complicate these apparently simple dramas, opening them to other registers of comedy and bathos. At the same time, repeating the core conflict begins to suggest a more open-ended set of questions around the agency of children, the regulation of our emotions, and what it means to satisfy (or thwart) a desire. The reasons behind those struggles aren’t always visible, especially in childhood. Without pathologising or judging, the film quietly asks: What might be hiding in plain sight?