Sleep Dealer
| Sleep Dealer | |
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Promotional film poster
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| Directed by | Alex Rivera |
| Produced by | Anthony Bregman |
| Written by | Alex Rivera David Riker |
| Starring | Luis Fernando Peña Leonor Varela Jacob Vargas |
| Music by | Tomandandy |
| Cinematography | Lisa Rinzler |
| Edited by | Alex Rivera Jeffrey M. Werner |
| Distributed by | Maya Entertainment |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | United States Mexico |
| Language |
Spanish English |
| Box office | $107,559 |
Sleep Dealer is a 2008 futuristic science fiction film directed by Alex Rivera.
Sleep Dealer depicts a dystopian future to explore ways in which technology both oppresses and connects migrants. A fortified wall has ended unauthorized Mexico-US immigration, but migrant workers are replaced by robots, remotely controlled by the same class of would-be emigrants. Their life force is inevitably used up, and they are discarded without medical compensation.
'Sleep Dealer' is set in a future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences, where three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology.
Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña), works at a factory, one of several sleep dealers. Here, workers are connected to the network via suspended cables connected to implanted nodes in their arms and back, allowing them to control the robots that have replaced them as unskilled labor on the other side of the border. The sleep dealers are called so because one may collapse if one works long enough. The story is told as a flash back, as Memo remembers his home in Santa Ana Del Rio, Oaxaca. His father wants him to participate in growing crops on the meagre family homestead. Memo's passion however is electronics and hacking. The homestead also has dried up on account of a dam built nearby and owned by the private corporation Del Rio Water. Memo and his father must trek on foot to buy water by the bag, while monitored by security cameras armed with machine guns. The media on American hi-def TV shows glimpses of a technological dystopia, although in a positive light with superficial spin-doctoring. As a hobby, Memo is building an electronic receiver that can tap into communications. As he continues to work on it, its range increases to far away cities.
One summer, a remote-controlled military aerial vehicle operated by the security forces of Del Rio Water catches him monitoring a frequency used by the drones, an act that warrants a brutal attack. He disconnects in time before the drone can locate him with certainty. On another occasion, he and his brother watch a live TV broadcast about a drone action that is about to destroy a building known to be intercepting drone communication. They quickly realize that the building is their own home where Memo has his equipment, and run to save their father whose life is in danger. However, they are too late, and the vehicle launches a rocket at the father, who had miraculously escaped a first attack on the building, instantly killing him. The pilot of the drone is shown to be Rudy Ramirez (Jacob Vargas). Memo boards a bus to the city Tijuana to find work.
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Wikipedia