“Sueño Perro: Instalación Celuloide de Alejandro G. Iñárritu” is a global multisensory exhibition rooted in the intersection of cinema and visual art, created by Academy Award-winning Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of Amores Perros (2000), Inarritu’s legendary debut feature, “Sueño Perro” brings to light never-before-seen footage which speaks to Amores Perros’ enduring themes of love, betrayal, and violence. These gritty vignettes, once abandoned on the cutting room floor and conserved for a quarter of a century in the film archives at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, capture the charged and interconnected sociopolitical realities of Mexico City, still relevant decades later.
Drawing on the raw power and visual poetry of these forgotten images, Iñárritu reimagines their impact through a mosaic of celluloid and sound. At the heart of the installation is a deep reverence for the materiality of 35mm film, whose physical grain, flicker, and warmth evoke a deep sense of nostalgia.
“Sueño Perro” marks Fondazione Prada’s third collaboration with Iñárritu, who conceived the film program “Flesh, Mind and Spirit” in Seoul (2009) and Milan (2016), and the experimental VR installation “CARNE y ARENA” in Milan (2017), which was part of the official selection of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and awarded a special Oscar by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As stated by Miuccia Prada, President and Director of Fondazione Prada, “With this project, we aim to open new perspectives on Iñárritu’s work and on a film that, from its very start, combined the force of realism with the density of symbolism. Twenty-five years after it was released, Amores Perros continues to speak to the present and to capture, with visual and emotional power, the full complexity of the world we live in.”
As explained by Iñárritu, “Over a million feet of film were left on the cutting room floor during the editing of Amores Perros. These intensely charged images, sixteen million still frames, were buried in the UNAM film archives for 25 years. On the occasion of the film’s anniversary, I felt compelled to revisit and re-explore these abandoned fragments, with the grain and the ghosts of celluloid which they hold. Stripped of all narrative, this installation is not a tribute, but a resurrection —an invitation to feel what never was. Like meeting an old friend we have never seen before.”
Iñárritu’s installation will be on view on the ground floor of the Podium, the main exhibition space of the Milan venue of Fondazione Prada. As part of “Sueño Perro”, a visual and sound display will be conceived by the Mexican writer and journalist Juan Villoro for the first floor of the building. Titled “Mexico 2000: The Moment that Exploded”, it will offer a second layer of narrative from a different perspective.
As explained by Juan Villoro, “Amores Perros can be located at a precise historical juncture. In the canonical year of 2000, Mexico was experiencing a rare moment of long-awaited hope: after 71 years in power, the Institutional Revolutionary Party had finally lost a presidential election, and the country was preparing to discover genuine democracy. At the same time, reality presented a panorama of inequality, corruption, and violence.”
With his display, Villoro will map the political, familial, societal, religious and economic conditions that gave birth to the three intertwined stories narrated in this film. As he outlined, “Filmed at a ‘moment of change’, Amores Perros did not reflect the end of an era but rather the beginning of a downfall. Twenty-five years later, its social relevance is alarming: what was happening then is still happening now. Its explosion is still ongoing.”
