Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whose Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is Mexico’s submission for the international feature Oscar this year, is an Academy favorite: His films have been nominated for 33 Oscars, with eight wins, and he has been nominated seven times and won four, including for picture, director and original screenplay for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), and director for The Revenant. But when the writer-director made his first feature, Amores Perros, he was largely unknown — and the film’s nomination for best foreign-language film came as a surprise.

Starring Emilio Echevarría, Goya Toledo and Gael García Bernal as disparate characters whose lives intersect unexpectedly, Perros was deemed “long and excruciatingly violent” by THR critic David Hunter, who noted it “perhaps too cleverly centers on a horrible car wreck that opens the film and is replayed several times.”

Nevertheless, it was a critical and commercial success and marked a surge in Mexican cinema on a global scale. “Mexicans have been afraid to explore deeply, look into themselves, but this has changed in the past few years,” Iñárritu told THR.

Shooting in Mexico City had its snags, though, as the director recalled in 2001: “We were outside a house we wanted to use as a location. Suddenly, two guys age 13 and 15 were there with big guns. They threw us on the floor, shouted, took everything from us.” Rather than be perturbed by the incident, Iñárritu cast both young men as extras in the film.

This story first appeared in a November stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.