Mexican landmark film Amores Perros premiered this week twenty years ago as part of International Critics’ Week, the parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival in France. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s debut feature marked a watershed in Latin American cinema, and launched the international careers of many of its cast and crew including the director, actors Gael García Bernal and Adriana Barraza, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, music composer Gustavo Santaolalla, art director Brigitte Broch, and producers Martha Sosa and Mónica Lozano, to name just a few.
As director González Iñárritu has recounted in interviews, the producers had submitted the film to the then Latin American delegate Alexis Grivas for Cannes’ official selection consideration. Grivas dismissed the film as too violent, too long, and argued that no one at Cannes would be interested in it.
It was Spanish film critic and programmer José María Riba, then director of the Critics’ Week (who died this past May 2), who decided to champion the film and host its world premiere. The premiere made a splash and the film was awarded with the Critics' Week Grand Prix. “Amores Perros may also turn out to be the most exciting blast of pure narrative in Cannes this year,” wrote Jonathan Romney in his review for The Guardian.
Cannes’ platform plus the award opened international doors for the Mexican film, which was invited to numerous festival across the globe including Toronto, Karlovy Vary, Jeonju, Havana, Sarajevo, among others. Amores Perros had its U.S. premiere at the 38th edition of the New York Film Festival in October 2000, to great success.
The film was picked up for U.S. distribution by Lionsgate and was released on Friday, March 30, 2001 to great acclaim. The then nascent Cinema Tropical organized a sneak preview of the film in New York City for special guests with the director and protagonist García Bernal in attendance followed by a cocktail reception at Café Frida. “Amores Perros feels like the first classic of the new decade, with sequences that will probably make their way into history,” wrote Elvis Mitchell in his New York Times review. The film went to earn nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.
Actor Gael García Bernal and director Alejandro González Iñarritu with Cinema Tropical’s director Carlos A. Gutiérrez at a special sneak preview of Amores Perros in New York City.
After the success of Amores Perros, González Iñárritu moved to Los Angeles, and he directed 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006), which form a trilogy of sorts and make use of the multi-narrative hyperlink cinema style. After his artistic divorce with Arriaga, González Iñárritu directed Biutiful (2010) in Spain. He solidified his film career and became a Hollywood auteur with Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), winning the Academy Award for Best Director two years in a row. In 2019 he was named president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.
On his end, García Bernal followed the success of Amores Perros with the equally successful Y Tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón, becoming an iconic figure for the renaissance of Latin American cinema. He went on to work with filmmakers such as Pedro Almodóvar, Walter Salles, Michel Gondry, Pablo Larraín, and Oliver Assayas. In 2016, he won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series for his role as Rodrigo de Souza in the popular Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle. In addition to his acting career, he has also directed two feature films, produced several others, and launched the Ambulante documentary film festival in Mexico.
Adriana Barraza, who played the role of the mother of Octavio in Amores Perros, worked again with González Iñárritu in Babel, for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She went on to act in numerous films in the U.S., and Mexico, more recently in Natalia Almada’s Everything Else.
Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto has developed a successful career in Hollywood working with renowned filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Julie Taymor, Cameron Crowe, Oliver Stone, Pedro Almodóvar, Ang Lee, and Spike Lee. He’s been nominated for an Oscar three times, in 2006 for Brokeback Mountain, in 2017 for Silence, and this year for The Irishman.
Guillermo Arriaga continued his successful career as a writer with a film career. In addition to the screenplays for 21 Grams and Babel, he wrote the screenplay for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada directed by Tommy Lee Jones, for which he won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005. In 2008 he made his directorial debut, The Burning Plain, starring Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence, and Kim Basinger. He co-wrote and produced the Venezuelan film From Afar (2015), winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Argentine-born Gustavo Santaolalla also continued to combine his fruitful career as a musician, composer and music producer with film projects. He won Academy Awards for Best Original Score in two consecutive years, for Brokeback Mountain in 2005, and Babel in 2006. German-Mexican production designer Brigitte Broch also won an Academy Award for her work in Baz Luhrmann’s jukebox musical Moulin Rouge!
The combination of the international success of Amores Perros with the New Argentine Cinema of the late nineties and early aughts, fueled by filmmakers such as Lucrecia Martel, Pablo Trapero, and Martín Rejtman, proved pivotal to the vital renaissance of Latin American cinema, which continues to flourish two decades later.
