Children’s Game #19: Haram Football

Synopsis

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 the Tigris River in Mosul. With the support of Baghdad’s Ruya Foundation, Francis Alÿs had been working with the inhabitants of the border region between Iraq and Syria, embedded with the armed forces fighting the Islamist militias. On the west bank of the Tigris, which had just been liberated from Daesh control, Alÿs documented a peculiar street game that he had heard of on a previous trip: a soccer game played without a ball, but with great skill, imagination and resistance by a group of young people, in defiance of the barbarous impositions of the Islamic State, an expression of passion and creativity that these young people were more than willing to reenact in front of the camera.

Main Cast

Crew

Department	Role	Name
Directing	Director	Francis Alÿs
Editing	Editor	Julien Devaux
	Color Grading	Jorge Romo
Sound	Sound Designer	Félix Blume
Department	Role	Name

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