Having just finished shooting his untitled Tom Cruise movie in London, Alejandro González Iñárritu is here on the Croissette for the 25th anniversary of the pic that lit the wick on his career, Amores Perros.
Broken out in three separate stories, the gritty, violent movie follows an amateur dog fighter, a supermodel, and a derelict assassin, who are all separately struggling to find love, and discover their lives metamorphosized by a devastating car wreck in Mexico City. The movie, together with Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 young male sex odyssey Y Tu Mama Tambien and Guillermo del Toro’s genre fantasia 2006 Pan’s Labyrinth were bullhorns when it came to putting Mexican cinema on the global map.
“When I shot Amores Perros, I shot one million feet of celluloid. When I edited my film, it was 2 hours and 45 minutes, and that was 16,500 feet. Nine-hundred eighty-five thousand feet was left,” Iñárritu tells Deadline today. That footage has been stored “like wine” in National University of Mexico per the 4x Oscar winner and in celebration of the movie’s anniversary, a global immersive visual experience is being mounted with those clips in Milan at Fondazione Prada (Sept 18-Feb 26, 2026) and in Mexico City at LagoAlgo (Oct. 5-Jan. 3, 2026). There’s also plans for an LA showcase as well. In addition, MACK books is releasing a book about the making of Amores Perros.
Iñárritu will return to London soon to edit the Cruise feature, temporarily titled Judy. Here’s what he had to say about that Warner Bros theatrical release, due out on Oct. 2, 2026, as well as Amores Perros which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best International Film.
DEADLINE: Take us back to Amores Perros here at Cannes Critics Week 25 years ago. What was it like to make your big splash here? Your peers were already on their way in Hollywood: Guillermo del Toro had done Mimic in 1997, and Alfonso Cuarón made The Little Princess in 1995 and Great Expectations in 1998.
ALEJANDRO G. IÑÁRRITU: In that time, in Mexico, there were only seven films produced a year. In 30 years, nobody had a film in the Cannes Film Festival beside one time Arturo Ripstein. Beside that we were invisible in international cinema. There was no national market for Mexican cinema. It was a horrible period, mostly all the films were subsidized by the government. You had to become a union member to become a cinematographer. It was a miracle (to get this film off the ground). At the time there was a company Altavista that decided to do a private finance company. It was a long script. I was doing a lot of advertising and radio, and they knew my work. They granted us $2 million. In Mexico, there was no career as a filmmaker. You did one film, and you were thankful that you had one chance. That chance, you had to put everything you thought, everything desire. That’s why the movie is minimalistic and a guacamole of thick ideas of contradictions and this is about a tropological experiment that is our city, Mexico City. We poured all our hearts. I didn’t have any expectations, and I did everything I could. We were young. The film came, I edited it in my home, and sent it to committee of Cannes to the Latin American guy who selected. He said, ‘No, this is very long, very violent’ Can the committee see it? ‘No!’ We were rejected by the guy who selects films for Latin America who presents to the guy who selects film. ‘Can they see it?’ we asked. ‘No!’ There was no Mexican distributor, there was no market. In that time, every single festival, Latin American Cinema was ghettoized, confined to the world cinema section of festivals.
Then, José Maria Arriva, who was director of semeana critica, he saw the film, and sent us a love letter. He was the one who said ‘Come’ and my mom said ‘you go to the parties that you’re invited only.’ And suddenly we presented the film.
At that time, Bernardo Bertolucci was the President of Critics Week. He invited us to have a lunch with the six other directors that we were competing. I present the film. Half of the screen went out in the middle. I smoked a pack of cigarettes. I arrive to Bertolucci full of nicotine to the lunch. He asked ‘How’d it go?’ I said ‘Terrible, it’s unbearable to present your film to the world’s audience.’ I was really shaken. I said, ‘This is the end. This is my first film; that’s it. I told him ‘I envy you. That you are Bernardo Bertolucci and you shouldn’t have that fear anymore.’ He said, ‘Alejandro,’ drinking his martini, elegantly dressed, he said ‘I have bad news for you. After the first film, everything gets worse.’ In that time in 2000, they were doing a presentation in Cannes Classics of 1900, and as a young man, I couldn’t understand of seeing your film 25 years later. And now I’m here 25 years later. Bernardo was right, every film gets worse. The reality is then the film became a huge thing and became incredibly successful around the time, and it became the talk of the town of why it wasn’t in competition. Then, I think Guillermo, Alfonso and I — suddenly the Mexican cinema became part of the global conversation.
DEADLINE: Looking back at the movie and what it’s about — could you make it again? Do you still see Mexico through the same lens?
AGI: Yes, even Mexico hasn’t changed for the best. The violence at time in Mexico was super tough. We were assaulted when scouting with guns. We were scouting the dog fights house and I’m talking on the telephone, and there was a gun to my head, and my production designer was down on the ground with a gun to his head. They took our cameras. It was a gang. It was a crack neighborhood. At the end, we said ‘please don’t do damage to anybody.’ We were saved, but Ioved that scouting, because the scouting was perfect. The line producer negotiated with the gang, and the exchange was that they would be appear in the film. Everybody who is in the background of the dog seats are the gangmembers. At this time, Mexico has become more difficult.
DEADLINE: Was there an immediate buying frenzy or Lionsgate took it off the table?
AGI: I think they took it off the table. At the time, foreign language film, they’ve always been difficult. Altavista was handling that. The film broke records of attendance in Mexico. It was an interesting zeitgeist for at the time, the ruling political party in power for 70 years changed.
DEADLINE: Talk about how Hollywood called you up after the success of Amores Perros here.
AGI: I got an agent that was John Lesher, they were offering me big franchise films. I was already developing 21 Grams. Sean Penn was the one who called me. I met him at a party. He said, if you have something, let me know. I thought it was good for me to explore a film of religious fanaticism, and faith, and everything exploding the South of United States. 21 Grams became the first Focus Features produced film under James Schamus. It was my first American film, independently with final cut.
Babel was Paramount and Brad Grey at that time. It was a third kind of exploration of connectiveness and non-linear structure. It was an ambitious films shot in various parts of the world. It cost us $25 million – nothing. It was difficult and beautiful and independently done by Paramount. That was a great time in cinema when the studios were supporting independent movies.
DEADLINE: Can you tell us anything about Tom Cruise’s stunts in your new film? Even on The Mummy there was a stunt
AGI: The only thing I will tell you, and don’t tell anybody, is that it’s nothing of that. I’m so excited. It was an incredible experience with Tom, Sandra Huller, Jesse Plemmons, with Riz Ahmed, but it’s a character driven film mounted on the shoulders of Tom which I knew he was exactly the right person.
DEADLINE: Is it about what’s been floating out there — that he’s the most powerful global figure trying to convince everyone he’s its savior?
AGI: No, the thing that I can tell you. This is a wild comedy of catastrophic proportions. It’s insane. He makes me laugh every day. The range that I discovered working with Tom is unprecedented for me as a director. I was so fucking impressed and happy.
DEADLINE: I have to imagine his tolerance for anything action assails DiCaprio’s.
AGI: He gives himself. He has an incredible sense of passion. It’s a brutal comedy. It’s a wild comedy of human nature. It’s scary and funny. It’s beautiful. I will start editing next week.
DEADLINE: With Revenant it was known that it was you versus the environment. But shooting in Pinewood in London, I would imagine, you’re in a controlled situation.
AGI: It was a very challenging film, you will see. It’s many borders of many things. Every film challenges me. I don’t like doing things that I’ve done already. This is something that we’ve never done and it’s exciting as well.
DEADLINE: Filmmakers, the industry love to knock streaming. But if it wasn’t for Netflix, you wouldn’t have been able to do your last film, Bardo.
AGI: Absolutely. I didn’t have any choice. Nobody wants to bet on a Spanish-language movie about immigrants. It broke every expectation of what a Mexican could talk about. It wasn’t about cartels, or gangsters, or drug dealers. It was something that was very personal and unique. It has to do with a particular identity which is me and many other immigrants with some kind of nature of mine.
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