In 2000, Alejandro G. Iñárritu loosed Amores Perros on the world. His directorial debut crackled with a brash energy and emotional intensity, expertly weaving three intertwined stories into a propulsive narrative. The film electrified Mexican cinema and wowed the international film festival circuit. For its young filmmaker, it served as both breakthrough and blueprint.
“It’s my first film. First times have a resonance nothing else can replicate,” Iñárritu told me. “It opened the door and taught me to trust risk, rigor, and empathy.”
In the decades since, Iñárritu has gone on to direct ever bolder films including 21 Grams (2003) and Biutiful (2010), landing Academy Awards for 2014’s Birdman and 2015’s The Revenant. His 2017 virtual reality film, Carne y arena, the first such work to screen at the Cannes Film Festival, was reimagined as a powerful multimedia experience. Now, though, the Mexican director is taking a moment to revisit the movie that started it all.
Gael García Bernal, Fernanda Aragonés, Martha Sosa, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu of (2000) at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals, 2025. Photo: Monica Schipper / Getty Images.
On the 25th anniversary of Amores Perros, Iñárritu is looking back at the work through the lens of two new projects. (The film was also feted at Cannes in May.) One is a deluxe book, released by Mack, compiling a host of material from the making of the film, not limited to on-set photography, storyboards, notes, and stills. Another is an installation, titled “SUEÑO PERRO” and opening at Mexico’s LagoAlgo, which offers a perspective of Amores Perros that was not seen on screen. It’s a view that was revelatory even to its maker.
“What struck me most,” Iñárritu said about revisiting the work, “was how differently I looked at the footage now compared to when I first edited the film.”
Amores Perros‘s ‘Prism of Realities’
Written by Guillermo Arriaga and Iñárritu, Amores Perros unfolds a triptych of stories in Mexico City, all of them connected by a fatal car crash.
In the first, a pair of friends, Octavio and Jorge (Gael García Bernal, in his first film role, and Humberto Busto), turn to dogfighting for easy money until a local gang threatens their prized hound. While fleeing the thugs, their vehicle collides with that of Valeria (Goya Toledo), a model whose livelihood is upended by her life-altering injury. The final chapter follows a homeless man (Emilio Echevarría), revealed to be a hitman named El Chivo, as he experiences a crisis of conscience after encountering the car wreck.
Gael García Bernal in (2000). Alta Vista Films, from (Mack, 2025). Courtesy of Alta Vista Films and Mack.
They’re narratives that form a gritty urban tapestry, spanning socio-economic strata and milieus from El Chivo’s dingy squat to Valeria’s luxury apartment. Passion and a simmering violence are threaded throughout, as is the presence of dogs (the film’s title is a pun on “perros,” the Spanish word for dogs). This interwoven structure, said Iñárritu, reflected the complexities of everyday life in Mexico City as much as its rich culture.
“Mexico City’s immensity demanded a mosaic—a prism of realities,” he explained. “From the outset Guillermo and I knew it would be fragmented and circular. Our cultural imagery—from the Popol Vuh and the codices to muralism—is maximalist and cyclical. Add Borges and Rulfo, Carver’s humanity, Altman’s Short Cuts, Kurosawa’s Rashomon, and even my father’s way of telling stories. All of that shaped the grammar of the film.”
The film’s energy began behind the camera, where Iñárritu and his crew worked, it seemed, on pure creative instinct. Even the cinematic frames—shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto on 35mm film and developed using bleach bypass processing—carried such high grain and saturated tones as to heighten the picture’s fizz and verve. Iñárritu’s enduring memory of the shoot? “Vitality.”
Emilio Echevarría on the set of (2000). Fernando Llanos, from (Mack, 2025). Courtesy of Fernando Llanos and Mack.
“We didn’t fully know how to do what we were attempting, but we were present and alive behind the camera,” he said. “We listened, we looked each other in the eye. There was electricity in the air—amateurs and film lovers with professional commitment.”
Amores Perros was a sensation upon its release. Beyond the accolades it received—a Cannes critics prize, a BAFTA, and an Oscar nom, among others—the film was revelatory for its visceral storytelling and construction, then unprecedented in Mexican cinema. It also launched Iñárritu, who came from the world of commercials and shorts, onto the global stage.
The film’s reels had a quieter afterlife. The 35mm footage that didn’t make it into the final cut entered the film archives of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where it sat undisturbed for a quarter of a century. Until now.
Resurrecting Amores Perros
Decades after the film’s release, Iñárritu has gone into the vault to retrieve these forgotten reels. The undertaking, he said, “felt like an archaeological adventure” as he untangled “the leftovers of about one million feet of celluloid.”
The upshot of his excavation is “SUEÑO PERRO,” which sees the director resurrect the film using its unused fragments, some 16 million still frames. The project represents a “living, contemporary experience,” he said. But Iñárritu is clear on one thing: this is no alternate edit of Amores Perros.
Goya Toledo in (2000). Alta Vista Films, from (Mack, 2025). Courtesy of Alta Vista Films and Mack.
“I wasn’t interested in re-cutting the movie—that baby had already been born,” he said. “I was drawn to the ‘placenta’ that was left behind: the same DNA, rich in nutrients, revealing textures and emotions that were invisible to me back then.”
Visitors to the installation at LagoAlgo will find themselves in a labyrinth, lit only by 35mm analog projectors casting newly cut and collaged fragments of the film. A soundtrack composed specially for the work will provide an atmospheric accompaniment. Unlike the released film, this project is not married to narrative, offering instead a mosaic of images that functions as dream, memory, and fleeting impression.
“We’re almost addicted to plot. But cinema also lives in the collision of images and sounds,” said Iñárritu. “I wanted a sensorial experience that each viewer could complete internally—no prescribed storyline, just presence.”
Alejandro G. Iñárritu on the set of (2000). Federico García, from (Mack, 2025). Courtesy of Federico García and Mack.
The use of 35mm film here also captures a fast-fading tactility. Scratches, light flares, and other celluloid marks are dotted throughout “SUEÑO PERRO,” the venue noted. They match the movie’s aesthetic, while standing in stark contrast to today’s digital technologies, where the pixel is dominant. The filmmaker himself likens these pixels to algorithms: “They are striking but lack complexity.”
On the other hand, he added: “A 35mm print carries a presence closer to the way in which we perceive reality. Digital media can be dazzlingly sharp, but our eyes live with grain, with a bit of mist—like certain Japanese paintings where nothing is entirely in focus.”
Fernando Llanos, from (Mack, 2025). Courtesy of Fernando Llanos and Mack.
Revisiting Amores Perros
Just as raw and grainy is Amores Perros, the book marking the 25th anniversary of Iñárritu’s first feature. Flipping through it, one can read the feel of the film in stills that pop with color and movement and the filmmakers’ commitment in detailed behind-the-scenes material. Texts by directors including Denis Villeneuve and Walter Salles, and novelists Jorge Volpi and Wendy Guerra, further illustrate the movie’s impact.
While the book also gathers some of the rave reviews that greeted the film’s release—including an article that dubs Iñárritu “the new Tarantino”—the director recalled that nothing from the film was saved for marketing purposes.
“What survived is honest, like dirty laundry,” he said. “It tells the truth about making an independent film in Mexico back then.”
Alejandro G. Iñárritu on the set of (2000). Federico García, from (Mack, 2025). Courtesy of Federico García and Mack.
For a film that fuses deep emotion with stark brutality, it’s little wonder that Amores Perros remains as riveting as ever today. Its themes, too, have not dulled with time. As Iñárritu himself contends, “I revisit the past only if it serves the present.”
“I think that it still feels like a furious shake against complacency,” he noted of the film’s legacy, “a human X-ray of love, loss, violence, and survival that refuses to age because those tensions haven’t.”
Having resurrected this film, might he feel compelled to revisit his other works in new forms?
“Unlikely,” he decided. “I doubt I’ll find another million feet of well-preserved film in a storage room.”
“SUEÑO PERRO” is on view at LagoAlgo, Bosque de Chapultepec, Pista El Sope S/N, Bosque de Chapultepec II Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City, October 5, 2025–January 4, 2026
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
