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Alejandro G. Iñárritu on his Amores Perros art project: an anti-AI stance in disguise
Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu has long been lauded for pushing the boundaries of storytelling. His 2000 debut, Amores Perros, was described as a “hypertext film” because its three principal storylines orbit around a central car crash yet otherwise proceed independently. In discussing his new Los Angeles County Museum of Art installation, Sueño Perro, which revisits hundreds of hours of footage that did not make it into his first feature, Iñárritu explained that his distinctive approach to cinema was inspired by his father.
“Iñárritu spoke from Los Angeles via video link, noting that his father was naturally gifted at storytelling. He tended to begin near the end of a tale so he could hook listeners, then loop back to the middle. He was adept at weaving in fresh “hooks” to keep people listening,” the director recalled.
Sueño Perro, a film installation built from archival material recorded during the making of Amores Perros, pushes narrative exploration even further. Iñárritu describes the work as consisting of what he calls “light sculptures,” a dream-like experience drawn from fragments of the original footage. The creation of Sueño Perro was a lengthy endeavor, spanning several years.
“I asked myself if I could recover material that didn’t make the final cut and whether those pieces still carried meaning,” Iñárritu explained. “That inquiry consumed seven years, during which I evaluated whether there was something valuable to extract. Amores Perros runs about 2 hours and 34 minutes and was filmed on roughly 18,000 feet of stock; 1,000,000 feet represents an enormous amount of footage. I suspect I filmed almost constantly.”
The director’s later successes, including Birdman and The Revenant, which earned him two Best Director Oscars, partly influenced his decision to revisit Amores Perros on its 20th anniversary, coinciding with Criterion’s remastered release. Watching the restored version reinforced for him that the film’s impact endures. “The bite of those sequences still felt sharp,” he said. “It was remarkable to realize the film held up through the years.”
A pivotal factor in Sueño Perro’s genesis was the fortuitous discovery that the archived recordings had lain dormant for years at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “I was blown away by that,” Iñárritu added, noting that producers Mónica Lozano, Tita Lombardo, and Martha Sosa chose to send the material that had been cut from the edit to UNAM.
The seven-year process of sifting the Amores Perros footage into an installation granted Iñárritu a creative freedom distinct from conventional filmmaking. While traditional movies must satisfy narrative momentum and audience expectations, an installation can separate imagery from plot and present them as pure audio-visual fragments.
“Liberating images from the grip of familiar narratives—where twists and turns often drive the experience—allows the visuals to communicate on their own terms,” he suggested. “Memory is never a linear reconstruction; it consists of flickers, images, and moments that, together, evoke meaning. Sueño Perro aims to mirror how our memories of a film feel: fragmented light and memory that may seem unrelated yet still resonate emotionally.”
Sueño Perro emphasizes forsaking cinematic plotting to pursue a different kind of truth, one that cinema can capture beyond conventional storytelling. Iñárritu cited the Latin American Boom authors—Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Julio Cortázar—as influences who experimented with narrative forms, challenging traditional notions of truth. He also drew inspiration from Akira Kurosawa’s Rashômon, in which multiple characters offer divergent versions of a single event, fostering his understanding that film can present alternate realities.
“Rashômon had a profound influence on me by showing how one event can be perceived in three varied ways, producing distinct stories. We often confuse truth with reality. Reality does not care about our beliefs or truths. Truth is deeply personal, but it is not identical to reality, which is far more complex. Films like Rashômon and Amores Perros remind us that we only glimpse a single facet of any event, and our world remains intricate because reality is not simply what we interpret it to be.”
To explore moving images’ capacity to convey realities beyond personal truth, Iñárritu returned to cinema’s technical roots, long before digital editing. Sueño Perro is deliberately tactile: it uses real film stock, projectors, and an immersive environment filled with smelling smoke and ambient Mexico City sounds. He believes that for younger audiences unfamiliar with a world where films were projected at 24 frames per second, witnessing vintage projectors can be revelatory.
“One striking aspect is entering a dark room and facing large projectors—these ‘dinosaurs’—the ancient magic lanterns that cast beams of light. The physicality of this setup makes a bold statement against AI. The experience makes people feel alive in that space. The installation is highly sensory; it shows cinema as more than a tablet or phone, which can feel isolating and limiting,” he explained.
Iñárritu hopes Sueño Perro will serve as a wake-up call at a moment when many films are consumed at home on small screens and when AI increasingly influences filmmaking. A lifelong admirer of traditional film’s materiality, he warned that AI could threaten the industry by eroding our ability to learn from what we see holistically.
“With AI, we may reach a point where our senses are starved of information, undermining our capacity to absorb cinema in a complete, bodily way. The AI crisis could undermine trust in what we observe on screen, a frightening prospect that might force us back to the basics of trusting our actual experiences. Perhaps there is a silver lining, but this is why I describe this project as an anti-AI exhibition.”
In parallel with Sueño Perro, Iñárritu has been developing his upcoming film Digger, featuring Tom Cruise. He found revisiting Amores Perros’ extensive footage to be a refreshing counterbalance to the pressures of a major Hollywood production.
“There’s enormous pressure to craft a strong story, and the installation work offered a liberating, game-like escape from those constraints. It provided a welcome break from Digger’s intensity,” he said. “It was wonderful to revisit moments from 25 years ago and enjoy the creative process again.”
Regarding Digger, Iñárritu could hardly contain his excitement about collaborating with Cruise, noting that the project promises a different kind of intensity than Amores Perros. “It’s Tom Cruise,” he exclaimed. “The experience has been thrilling and highly enjoyable.”
Sueño Perro: A Film Installation by Alejandro G. Iñárritu is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through July 26.
