Sleep Dealer

Sleep Dealer is a science fiction film selected for the Dramatic Competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, and won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Festival.

Fast Facts:

1. Directed by: Alex Rivera
2. Starring: Leonor Varela and Jacob Vargas
3. In Spanish, with English subtitles

Brief Background and Synopsis

The film's clever plot concerns a young man, Memo (Luis Fernando Peña), who lives on a farm in a rural, arid, futuristic Mexico, near a large reservoir protected by U.S. fighter jets. Although his family cannot grow food without water, they are prevented from accessing the water in the reservoir. After building an unauthorized radio, Memo is forced to flee to Tijuana to become a "node worker," a lucrative profession that involves attaching wires to implanted outlets on the body. These "nodes" allow Mexican workers to perform laborious tasks at a distance through robots stationed at work locations across a walled-off United States. While in Tijuana, Memo meets the beautiful Luz Martínez (Leonor Varela) and gets in touch with Rudy (Jacob Vargas), a fighter pilot for the U.S. military.

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