Game in the Sand (Unreleased 1964 Short Film by Werner Herzog)

Game in a Sand is an unreleased short film that was created in 1964 by German director Werner Herzog. The 14 minute short was his second directorial effort, and is said to involve 4 children, and a chicken in a cardboard box. The chicken is, at one point, buried up to its neck in sand. Not much more is known about the plot.

Werner Herzog has stated that the during the shoot things got "out of hand", casuing him to abandon the project, although he has never elaborated on the circumstances. He has likened the shoot to that of his 1970 film "Even Dwarfs Started Small", in which an actor was accidentally set on fire and run over by a track (although he was miraculously uninjured), a piglet was seen suckling its dead mother, and a chicken was seen engaging in cannibalism. Despite these controversial on-set incidents, Even Dwarfs was released on schedule. Whatever "got out of hand" during the shooting of Game in the Sand would have had to be worse than any of the controversial incidents that took place during the filming of Even Dwarfs, to warrant it being totally abandoned and barred from release.

Game in the Sand has never been publicly shown or released in any form, and Herzog has said himself that he will never release it in his lifetime.