Francis Alÿs Movies

Children getting into a frightful mess that only parents could sort out: this familiar scenario plays out subversively, for the rescuing...

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...

In August 2017, during the final phase of the Fatah (Conquest) Operation, the Iraqi Army pushed Islamic State combatants back from the east bank of...

A traditional animation, hand-drawn in 500+ frames (which are also on display as part of the installation). The animation consists solely of a shoe...

A group of children hold hands in a circle. The child in the middle plays the lamb, the one outside is the wolf. The wolf tries to catch the lamb by...

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...

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?...

Neither indoors nor out, but on the doorstep, where you might play a quick game while waiting for someone. Girl and boy pile up candy wrappers, face...

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...

"Mixing water from the Red Sea with water from the Black Sea". Trabzon, Turkey-Aqaba, Jordan, 2010.

For an indeterminate period of time, the magnetized metal collector takes a daily walk through the streets and gradually builds up a coat mad of any...

The Nightwatch documents an action realised by Alÿs in 2004 in which he released a fox into London’s National Portrait Gallery in the...

Close-up on shiny boots, knotted elastic, cobbles. Within the confines of a courtyard two demure little girls are playing a game of confinement,...

This game requires considerable practice and precision, especially on the uneven terrain of an urban waste lot. The action consists in flicking a...

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

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

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...

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.