Director: Alex Rivera
2008, USA/Mexico, 90 min.
Rating: PG-13 (violence/sexual situations)
A thoughtful science fiction film that explores some troubling and complex contemporary issues: corporate ownership of natural resources, remote warfare, internet privacy, unscrupulous military contractors. Set mostly in Mexico, Sleep Dealer imagines a future in which local water rights have been bought up by multinational corporations, and people connect to a virtual-reality cyber network by means of “nodes” (electronic jacks implanted in their arms and necks).
Memo, a young man from Oaxaca, travels north to Tijuana after his father’s death. A self-taught computer hacker, he is looking for work, but also perhaps for vengeance. His father was killed by a military drone defending corporate-controlled water from aqua-terrorists. Memo meets a beautiful stranger who hooks him up with black market nodes, but whose kindness cloaks an ulterior motive.
