Since exploding onto the scene as a winner at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, Alejandro Gonzales Innaritus Amores Perros has gone on to achieve universal acclaim and admiration from critics, cinemagoers and directors alike. The film undoubtedly heralds the arrival of a major new talent in world cinema. Beginning with a kinetic, bone-crushing car accident, Amores Perros imaginatively interweaves the stories of its three victims: Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal) a young man who has fallen in love with his violent brothers wife; Valeria (Goya Toledo), a beautiful Mexican model for whom physical appearances are everything; and El Chivo (Emilio Echevarria), a former political assassin now exiled from his family. The result is a moving, visceral eulogy to life, loss and dog fighting on Mexicos mean streets.