Francis Alÿs Movies

A piñata is a papier-mâché figure stuffed with sweets. Common at birthdays in urban patios, here we find it in a field, where a...

First recorded in the Isle of Wight in 1848, conkers was commonly played in the UK until it was banned from most schools in the early 2000s. Players...

On a wide, gravelly mountain road, earth-coloured dwellings in the background, small boys scamper behind tyres of different thickness and...

Outside a stark tent city, this version of the game involves a grid of squares, two across by six long, marked by lines gouged into the arid ground....

Over the city of Lubumbashi looms the mampala or slag heap of the Étoile du Congo cobalt mine, its lower slopes today sifted by the...

Grandma’s Footsteps in Britain, Red light, green light in North America, Thunder, weather, lightning in Austria, One, two, three, ciggy...

Each person’s action affects everybody. This fine principle of teamwork applies even when individuals are pulling in different directions....

The castle must be positioned just far enough from the sea to be completed before the tide reaches it. As the moat is dug by busy spades, the vacated...

The name of the game comes from the Spanish “tenedor,” fork, but its other name, “Come fango, Eat Mud,” seems more apt as we...

In order to avoid being tagged, the shadow must run away. Only the body to which the shadow belongs can escape to protect the shadow from the...

The children of a mountain village near Mosul re-enact a century of Iraqi history, from the secret Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 to the realm of...

Snail racing is a game of unequal chances, especially when your snails are not trained champions, but randomly plucked off a wall; individual...

The game is filmed from above in a single take, emphasizing the inexorable process of subtraction. Six children place five chairs in a row, facing in...

Each couple tries to save an orange from gravity. When it falls, the pair is eliminated. This exercise in collaboration involves intimacy: faces are...

The game “Mosquito of Pachacútec” refers to the historical metaphor of how the Inca Empire was challenged in its territorial...

Cuban children have always built chivichanas for racing, using any wood to hand and ball bearings for wheels. During the hardship of the early 1990s,...

A guitar, a bacalao and a teddy bear dangle at the top of a wooden pole. The mast is slickened with grease. A group of teenagers gather. Strength and...

The Purépecha community has played Uárhukua for 3,500 years. The game symbolises the fight between the old sun – the night...

Ordinary bottle tops, once flattened, threaded and tensed for spinning, become as sharp as gladiator swords. It’s edge against thrumming edge...

First we drive past harrowing scenes of missile and bullet damage, into an area that’s still intact. At a crossroads not far from the...