Berlin-based visual artist Ann Oren transitioned from more than a decade immersed in short-form, docu and experimental cinema into her audacious feature debut, Piaffe — a bold, body-conscious fever dream that signaled the arrival of a striking new voice. As noted in our Nicholas Bell’s ★★★★ review, the film is nothing short of arresting, a work that fuses tactile sensuality with conceptual rigor. Its selection for competition for the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 2022 further cemented Oren’s emergence from the gallery space into from promising debut into a sophomore feature that may contain overlapping themes of desire and control, here is everything we know so far … for Ann Oren’s Objet A.
Packaging for the film took place back in 2023 with participation at the Locarno’s Alliance 4 Development lab and FIDMarseille’s FIDLab back in 2023, and production took place in Germany and Luxembourg last June of 2025 for about a month-long shoot.
Ingeborg and Adam are a stunning couple who work together as hand surgeons. Ingeborg happens to be kleptomaniac and Adam supports her habit by watching her in action. One day a golden lighter tickles Ingeborg’s klepto urge and while rushing away from its owner with it, she twists her ankle. An artisan makes her a custom-made crutch-object.
Ingeborg develops a physical attachment to her crutch, and through it, a connection grows between her and her new assistant Gaia. Their lives are turned upside down by the arrival of this mysterious and enigmatic woman with a unique connection to nature, especially the forest.
Simone Bucio makes it two for two with Oren, and we also find the likes of Louis Hofmann, Aenne Schwarz, and Georg Friedrich.
We have Juan Sarmiento G. – the cinematographer to Simón Mesa Soto and Kaouther Ben Hania cinema. On the producing side we find Schuldenberg Films’ Sophie Ahrens, Fabian Altenried and Kristof Gerega, Tarantula’s Donato Rotunno and asterisk’s Vicky Miha.
Seeing that production was completed last summer and that this German-language film was not a Berlinale competition selection means the team might have waited for the Croisette. Locarno is definitely in the cards if for some reason this does not break the Critic’s Week, Directors’ Fortnight or Un Certain Regard sections in Cannes.
