Amores perros in many ways marked the arrival of this seismic movement, but even without that context, the movie is a bracing experience. Opening channels for private investment, developing scripts without state oversight, and opening new theaters across the country paid off almost immediately, depicting Mexico in ways modern citizens recognized, debated, and paid to see repeatedly. After spending the 1990s on virtual life support, this previously state-controlled industry was desperate to nurture new artists in all crafts, who in turn might issue stylistic and political challenges to the cinema they’d inherited-hopefully reenergizing audiences at home and abroad. This sudden efflorescence was due in part to huge changes in Mexico’s film economy. Indeed, this intense triptych of three differently tragic plotlines, united by one bloody car crash in the heart of Mexico City, introduced an armada of new talents who have had prodigious impacts on 21st-century cinema: director and co-editor Alejandro González Iñárritu ( Babel, Birdman), cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto ( Frida, The Irishman), screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga ( The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada), composer Gustavo Santaolalla ( Brokeback Mountain, The Motorcycle Diaries), and actor Gael García Bernal ( Y tu mamá también, Bad Education).

Arriving at the dawn of the millennium, Amores perros (2000) remains one of the most audacious and accomplished debut features of our tumultuous century.

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