Sleep Dealer (2008)

Director:

Alex Rivera

Writers (WGA):

Alex Rivera (screenplay) &
David Riker (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

10 December 2008 (France)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Connect to your destiny.

Plot:

Set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences...

Plot Keywords:

Network | Computer | Poverty | Dam Busting | Drought

Awards:

5 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Leonor Varela	...	Luz Martínez
Jacob Vargas	...	Rudy
Luis Fernando Peña	...	Memo
Giovanna Zacarías
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Marius Biegai	...	Camera man
Emilio Guerrero	...	Ricky
Jake Koenig	...	Foreman
Ursula Tania	...	Prostitute

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for some violence and sexuality.

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA | Mexico

Language:

Spanish | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Cadereyta, Querétaro, Mexico

Company:

Likely Story

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Memo, at work operating the robot, helps the worker next to him who collapses, he is not wearing the contact lenses that he needs to operate the robot. (He did not have time to take them out.)

Underrated -- Culturally significant

Science fiction as a genre exposes two things about a culture: our hopes for the future, and our fears for the future. What foreign science fiction does for us then is tap directly into the hopes and fears of a culture that is alien to us.

The story of Memo mixes the Mexican condition with a cautious approach to an exciting technology. While "nodes" allow people to directly connect their brains to an Internet of sorts, "sleep dealers" construct cheap, unsafe sweatshops where noders can perform dirt-cheap labor for developed nations, without leaving home.

There are plenty of eye-opening layers of apprehension for the future that are taken straight from the Mexican psyche: the construction of the authoritarian Del Rio Dam in Memo's village echoes the ongoing "water rights" controversies throughout Central America; the closed border with America echoes isolationist fears; the ability of an American corporation to send warships into Mexican villages not only with impugnity but complete openness echoes fears of American corporate-driven hegemony.

Flag-wrapped Americans will deride this movie as Anti-American at worst; cultural ignorance at best. But it is a different sort of cultural ignorance that remains ignorant of the sentiments illustrated in this well-done foreign film.