Biography
Ann Oren was born in 1979 in Tel Aviv, Israel. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York with a Bachelor's degree in Film & Television (2004), followed by a Master's degree in Fine Arts (2007). In the following years, she realized a series of video installations that were shown at the Biennale of Young Art in Moscow (2010), the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art (2012), and the Anthology Film Archives in New York, among others. She has also received numerous grants for her work from various institutions and has been selected for art residencies.
In 2015, Ann Oren moved to Berlin on a fellowship at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, where she continued to realize video installations and her multi-channel installation "The Supreme Spasm" (2016) was shown as a solo installation. At the same time, Oren expanded her artistic focus to longer cinematic forms. In her 54-minute experimental film "Deux Femmes: for Man Ray" (IL 2017), she combined images from pornographic film footage of the photographer with similar footage from today's amateur porno filmmakers. The film premiered at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
For her experimental documentary "The World Is Mine" (IL 2017), Oren immersed herself in the world of obsessive manga fans as a cosplayer in Tokyo. The film won the Jury Prize for Best IT Documentary at the Moscow Documentary Festival DOKer; it was awarded Best Documentary at the Epos Art Film Festival in Israel. The 16-minute experimental short film "Passage" (2020), about a noisemaker who uses his own body to imitate the sounds of a trotting dressage horse and gradually becomes absorbed in the imitation, was also a great success. "Passage" premiered at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival and won the award for Best Experimental Short Film at the prestigious Slamdance Festival in Utah, USA.
With "Piaffe" (2022), which continues the idea of "Passage" with a female protagonist, Ann Oren made her first feature film. The film premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival and has screened at numerous other festivals. "Piaffe" won the Junior Jury Award at Locarno, the Silver Hugo Award at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Jury Prize at the Gérardmer Film Festival. At the achtung berlin 2023 festival, the film won the Best Production Award and the Best Director Award. The German theatrical release of "Piaffe" was in May 2023.