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Alejandro G. Iñárritu describes his Lacma exhibit, Sueño Perro, as an anti-AI statement in art and cinema.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the renowned Mexican filmmaker, is celebrated for pushing storytelling boundaries. His 2000 debut, Amores Perros, was hailed as a “hypertext film” because its three interwoven storylines orbit a central car crash yet feel largely independent. In discussing his new Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) installation, Sueño Perro, which revisits hundreds of hours of footage that didn’t make it into Amores Perros, Iñárritu credits his father as the source of his distinctive creative instinct.
“My father was, by nature, an exceptional storyteller,” Iñárritu shared in a video interview from Los Angeles. “He often began near the end of the tale, tossing in a hook before looping back to the middle. He had a talent for planting new hooks throughout, inviting you to listen to a longer, more involved story.”
Sueño Perro, a film installation built from a vast archive of Amores Perros footage, expands on his narrative experiments by presenting what he calls “light sculptures” or a dream arising from fragments of the original material. The project spanned years of meticulous work and curation.
“I thought, maybe I could salvage material that was never used and that might still carry meaning,” he explained. “That curiosity drove a seven-year journey to determine what could be meaningful.” Amores Perros clocks in at 2 hours and 34 minutes and originally comprised roughly 18,000 feet of film, making the compiled archive a staggering volume—about 1,000,000 feet, by his estimation. He admits he may have been filming almost nonstop at the time.
Iñárritu, whose later films Birdman and The Revenant earned him multiple Best Director Oscars, was inspired to revisit Amores Perros in part to mark its 20th anniversary, which coincided with a remastered edition released by Criterion. Viewing the remaster reinforced for him that the film still carried its edge after all these years. “The film’s bite remained incredibly sharp,” he remarked, finding it striking how well it held up.
He also highlights a fortunate discovery: the archived material had sat untouched for years at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). “That discovery astonished me,” he said. He credited producers Mónica Lozano, Tita Lombardo, and Martha Sosa for sending the unused footage to UNAM, where it could be revisited.
The seven-year process of sorting through Amores Perros’ footage to create Sueño Perro granted Iñárritu a different kind of artistic freedom—one that stands apart from traditional filmmaking. While narrative-driven cinema often demands a coherent storyline, the installation allows fragments of image and sound to exist independently of a plot.
“When you free images from narrative constraints, they must communicate in themselves,” he observed. “Memory doesn’t recall a film as a single, complete piece; it flickers with moments and images that, together, evoke feeling. Sueño Perro captures that memory-work, presenting light and memory as a mosaic that can suggest truths without telling a conventional story.”
Sueño Perro centers on relinquishing cinematic plot in favor of seeking a different kind of truth that can be expressed through moving images. Iñárritu cites the Latin American Boom writers—Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Julio Cortázar—as major influences who challenged conventional storytelling and explored the nature of truth. He also references Akira Kurosawa’s Rashômen, with its multiple perspectives on a single incident, as a key inspiration for understanding how film can construct alternate versions of reality.
“Rashômon showed me that a single event can be narrated from three different viewpoints, each telling a different story. This got me thinking about truth versus reality: truth is deeply personal, while reality is far more complex. We often confuse the two, but cinema can expose that distinction by presenting varied perceptions of the same moment rather than a single, definitive version.”
To emphasize tactile cinema and counter the encroachments of digital technology and AI, Iñárritu chose to stage Sueño Perro with real film stock and traditional projectors. Audiences enter a compact, smoky space where the distinctive sounds of a Mexico City environment mingle with the hum and glow of authentic projection equipment. For those who never experienced the era of 24 frames per second film projection, the experience is intended to feel almost revelatory.
“One of the most powerful aspects of this experiment is stepping into darkness and confronting these massive projectors—the relics of cinema that cast light in a room. Their physical presence feels like a statement against AI. The sensation is immersive and highly sensorial, illustrating that cinema is more than a screen on a tablet or phone; it is a bodily, shared experience,” he explained.
Iñárritu hopes Sueño Perro will serve as a wake-up call as more films are watched at home on small screens and as AI becomes increasingly embedded in filmmaking. He is passionate about old-school film’s materiality and worries about AI diminishing our sensory learning. “With AI, we risk a future where our perception is dulled and we question everything we see on screen. Reality becomes harder to trust. This is why I want to present an anti-AI show that reminds us cinema should be felt with the body, not merely processed by machines.”
While working on Sueño Perro, Iñárritu also developed ideas for his upcoming film Digger, starring Tom Cruise. He described the experience as a refreshing counterpoint to Amores Perros, noting that it will possess a different intensity and energy, but should be no less compelling.
“Tom Cruise is involved—it's a different kind of intensity, and it’s incredibly exciting. Working with him has been a fantastic experience.”
Sueño Perro: A Film Installation by Alejandro G. Iñárritu is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through July 26.
