Schoolyard playtime: 15 minutes in which children make their own laws—navigating violence, betrayal, and empathy without adult intervention. Filmed by Claire Simon in the early 1990s in her daughter’s schoolyard.

Virtually without dialogue, this film shows how people living on Mexico’s arid high plateau survive in this bone-dry region by hunting birds, snakes, and rodents. An indictment of their forgotten poverty, but also a tribute to their vitality.