Both Iñárritu and Cruise are powerful, controlling perfectionists on a movie production, “it was the most amazing, unexpected, sweet, gentle relation that I have had on a set,” Iñárritu said. “His manners, his understanding, his passion, and his integrity, and the way he prepares. He loves the process. Film has been his life for 40 years. I have never seen somebody so devoted. I was happy to share with him that passion. We built an incredible relation of mutual trust. He will surprise the world. People will see a new kind of actor. And not only him, the all the cast: Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Jesse Plemons. We had a blast. It was challenging, but it was wild comedy.”

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Amores Perros, Iñárritu’s daring triptych debut feature, shot in Mexico City and introducing Gael Garcia Bernal.

The director screened the restored 4K version at Cannes to a packed house. The movie holds up, it’s vivid, loud, and violent, from the visceral dogfights to the glam model (Goya Toledo), mutilated in car crash. A brand-new 5.1 surround sound mix by Jon Taylor enhances the intensity.

The director hesitated to watch the film at Cannes, after undergoing the painstaking Criterion restoration for the 20th anniversary in 2020 with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto; he had only watched the film in bits and pieces.

“I hadn’t seen the film complete in 25 years. The film was shot in a bleach-bypass process, or silver retain, which is very corrosive, because the silver stays in the negative. So we had to restore a lot of things. [I thought] what young man did that? And all the effort that it took for us who did it, considering the little money we had, and so little time. I was impressed by the muscle. It hasn’t become a flaccid film.”

Amores Perros played Cannes 25 years ago, but not in Competition, where it was rejected. It was invited to Critics’ Week, won the Grand Prix, and landed a American release in 2001 from Lionsgate.

It launched the careers of Iñárritu, García Bernal, then only 19, and lemser Prieto. After the screening, García Bernal said, “It’s a film that we all were transformed, and even the way in Mexico we were perceived, the films were transformed.”

“Even when we were a small independent film in a very small section that is not even official, it became the film that everybody wanted to see,” said Iñárritu. The film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar; the writer, director, and producer went on to win Best Director fo “Birdman” and “The Revenant,” and Original Screenplay and Best Picture “Birdman.”

When they made “Amores Perros,” the Mexican industry was producing only five to seven local films a year from the same directors, with a nationalistic flavor, subsidized by government. Maybe one would wind up in theaters. “Every director I knew at that time, they [had] just made one film,” he said. “And they were already 50. A film was considered one-time opportunity, and you better make sure that you put all you have to say there.”

Novelist Guillermo Arriaga wrote Amores Perros, “an incredible, solid, complex script,” said Iñárritu. “Mexico City is a complex city with incredible ancient culture and visual traditions. It has the third most museums in the world. We were middle-class and educated, so we could see and observe: low, high, wherever.”

The “Amores Perros” team had been working together making videos for 7 years. They were already sophisticated. “We were all Chilango, so we knew exactly how that city smells and feels,” said Iñárritu. “There was a new government that threw out the party dictatorship of 70 years. There was hope and feeling that we need[ed] to shake who we were, how we talk about ourselves, how we see ourselves. This film came into the right moment.”

Iñárritu has written an essay about making the film for Mack Books’ “Amores Perros, which showcases unseen set photography, critical essays, and production documents. And “Sueño Perro: Iñárritu’s Celluloid Installation” is making the rounds, starting at Fondazada in Milan and LagoAlgo in Mexico City, and then moving to LACMA in Los Angeles.

Back in 20o0, “Amores Perros,” which runs two hours and 37 minutes, was edited down from 1 million feet of material. “That means 15,000 feet of 35 millimeters,” said Iñárritu, “so 985,000 feet were left out. I was experimenting with handheld and lenses, and Rodrigo and I were on fire.”

His one million feet of dailies were in storage in Mexico’s National Autonomous University archive. “I started exploring. It was beautiful to see how, when I start seeing all [that] was left out, how many films were within the film, and watching this material with a new gaze. When I was editing, I was watching to find the pieces of the puzzle to serve the narrative. But now I was seeing the flow and the beauty itself of the images, so without the dictatorship of the narrative, I start collecting. And that’s the beginning of this installation. It’s 35-millimeter projectors in labyrinth of dark rooms, with big guys projecting material like a magic lantern. It’s very dreamy. People are touched by it because it’s not an homage. It’s a resurrection, a reinvention itself, and it stays detached from the film.”

The essay reveals the context of the “Amores Perros” production, the director’s aesthetic and philosophy of filmmaking, and how he creates cards for each sequence in a movie. “My obsession is the grammatical film language,” he said. “Those cards integrate everything that I should know when whatever challenge of the film comes — in crisis, in production, in depression. Those are my bricks that sustain some clarity during [filming], and it helped me out. It’s an exercise that takes me days and months to get it all, but it’s homework that goes deep for me to understand what I’m dealing with. What is the purpose of the scene? What is the purpose of that character, what does the other guy want, and what will be the conflict?”

While the life of a filmmaker is peripatetic at best, Iñárritu and his wife, with their two children out of the nest, are trying to decide where to live. They’ve been residing in Los Angeles. “We are gypsies,” he said. “I did ‘Bardo’ in Mexico. So I lived in Mexico City for one year and a half. Then I finished shooting the last film at Warner Bros. It’s a difficult moment in the world, and that decision is important for us. Things have changed a lot, as you know.”