Francis Alÿs Movies

The props in this game are wooden sticks or branches shaped like guns. Two kids pretend to fire at each other, making elaborate and highly varied...

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...

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...

For the last decade Alÿs has made repeated trips to the dusty highlands south of Mexico City to chase the tornadoes that frequently occur in...

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...

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...

Stark though it is, the roof terrace with its low ochre-red wall and washed turquoise abstract seems the nearest thing to a garden among the...

We see three kids from behind, standing at a set distance from a peeling, whitewashed wall. The rule is that each player throws a coin against the...

1998, 00:27:43

Once upon a time Ani was one of the most important cities of the Middle Ages. People started abandoning the city until all life left and silence fell...

Why do all the bottle tops start the same way up, grouped together, if there are two teams? When is the ball launched with a plank and when by hand?...

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...

A 10-year-old boy in a pink salwar kameez stands near a dune-coloured wall under a powder-blue sky. He frowns and gesticulates, conversing in stops...

A red VW Beetle drives up a hill, an image which is accompanied by a loud soundtrack of a brass band's rehearsal. The driver is listening to a...

This ancient Chinese game is played between two people, who in unison say ‘rock, paper, scissors’ before ‘throwing’ one of...

The cameras follow a reel of film as it unrolls through the old part of Kabul—pushed by two children, uphill and downhill, like a hoop.

For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was...