Sightlines · reception
How Amores Perros was received
2000 · Alejandro G. Iñárritu · Amores Perros on Sightlines
The arc
It detonated out of Cannes 2000 — winning the Critics' Week grand prize — and rode to a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination as the announcement of a new Mexican cinema. A quarter-century on, the consensus has only hardened: for many fans it's still the best thing Iñárritu has ever made, debut included.
What’s debated
The evergreen fight: did Iñárritu peak with his first film — with fans holding Amores Perros over his actual Oscar winners — plus the perennial 'can I even watch this?' debate over the dog-fighting scenes.
Its footprint
'Love's a bitch' is one of the great taglines, the car-crash-as-connective-tissue structure became the template for a whole decade of hyperlink cinema, and it's the film that gave the world Gael García Bernal.
Where it stands
A cornerstone of the Mexican new wave and a Letterboxd heavyweight — the 'start here' film for both Iñárritu and 21st-century Latin American cinema.
Did you know? The dog fights looked so real that the film opens with an explicit disclaimer that no animals were harmed — the scenes were staged with trained dogs and editing, and the controversy still followed the film through its international release.