Title: Display Object of Riddle
Foreign Title: Objet d’énigme
Year: 2026
Country of Origin: Belgium/Italy
Language: Not applicable
Director: Chiara Caterina
Click here to see the cast and crew
Objet d’Enigme is translated as Object of Riddle. Now, if you can’t judge a book by its cover, you probably shouldn’t depend on this film’s title either. You see, I’m not a big fan of puzzles, so I was leaning toward the more direct translation: Enigma. Besides, if you’re a fan of structuralist film, you have to admit that a riddle usually has an intended answer, a definite solution; enigmas, on the other hand, are difficult to explain and often have no clear solution at all. Watch this film and decide which side of the “unexplained” you fall on.
With Objet d’Énigme, Chiara Caterina’s 2025 post-production residency at Paris-based Light Cone’s Atelier 105 has produced a most watchable film, aimed at art-film types who relish experimental works that blur the boundaries between disciplines while proposing an innovative approach to creating a total visual experience. You will have to be discerning, though, to accept a lack of plot, character and narration, and still appreciate how technology—in this case, an iPhone’s LiDAR scanner—can be used to produce what can only be called “dreamlike imagery.”
The 17-minute film is simply overloaded with objets, suggesting that the enigmatic Object is, in fact, the film itself. In one sequence, we move from doors to doorknobs, from doorknobs with skeleton keys to numerous skeleton keys with key tags, from keys in keyholes to keys laid out, Duchamp-style, on crumpled, folded cloths. We are treated to a parade, a veritable pageant, of abandoned rooms and draped furniture posed as fetishistic objects—all without mentioning the film’s principal controlling device: its unrelenting circular motion.
Caterina’s scanned images rotate throughout the entire viewing experience. The circling shots are intensified by her chiaroscuro lighting and a litany of sound effects: phones ringing, juxtaposed with church bells—or is it train bells?—that emerge from what can only be called an atonal abstract music track. That’s when you realize that the only motion so far has been the camera. And with that realization, in tribute to the 3D scanner, you understand what we have been watching: “models,” objects presented on a 360-degree runway. Freeze frame at last. Title of the film. We get to return to our lives.
