Jeremy Workman

Let’s just say that it is nearly impossible to not fall head over heels for the documentary Lily Topples the World. Its subject, 20-year-old Lily Hevesh, went from being a shy adoptee from China to becoming the Michelangelo of domino topplers via her YouTube videos that she started posting when she was just nine years old. Known as Hevesh5, she became lone female in an elite community of professional domino artists online and the most acclaimed with one billion digital views.

Many of us probably haven’t thought about dominoes, those tiles as ordinary as a deck of cards, let alone played with them in years. But chances are you’ve never seen dominoes used in the way that Lily Hevesh uses them to construct elaborate spirals and sculptures only to be toppled with the gentle flick of a finger into a mesmerizing, nearly musical chain reaction. Hevesh is the 20 year old superstar of professional domino construction — yes, there is such a thing — a feat that requires ingenuity and engineering, not to mention patience and concentration. Thanks to YouTube, she’s become a phenomenon with some three million subscribers.