Francis Alÿs Movies

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

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 Belgian-born and Mexican-based conceptual artist Francis Alÿs arrived in Iraq in October 2016 to document the displacements caused by the...

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...

Kisolo is one of a thousand variants of the global Ur-game, Mancala, a “sowing” game sometimes still played with seeds even when using a...

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...

Knucklebones, or jacks, has existed for more than 2000 years and was first played with the astralagus bones of a sheep. This version –played...

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

High above the city that shimmers like a distant sea, a boy kicks a plastic bottle half full of liquid up a steep shanty road of light and dark. A...

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...

The video shows the artist walking in circles around the flagpole (“Madre Patria”) in Zócalo, Mexico City’s monumental...

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...

Che Ling means “pull bell sound”. This ancient Chinese juggling is a form of yoyo, once popular in Europe as “diabolo”. Two...

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...

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?...

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....

64 Coldstream guards walk separately in London entering through different streets and unaware of one another’s route. Upon meeting, they fall...

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

Francis Alÿs is filmed by his collaborator Rafael Ortega walking along Fitzroy Square, drumming out rhythms by dragging a wooden stick on the...