In Alex Rivera’s first feature film, the futuristic Sleep Dealer, people can directly hook themselves to computers via nodes that are implanted into their bodies, enabling them to control robots to do work. But the story is more than a virtual reality game; it tells the story of a man from a Mexican village who longs for a better life. 

Sleep Dealer centers on Memo Cruz who lives with his parents and his brother in the small village of Santa Ana del Rio. Santa Ana is an isolated Mexican farming community, and the only technological advance in the village has been a dam that was built by a corporation that now controls all of the village’s water supply.

Cruz longs to escape impoverished life and move to one of the big cities up north to find work in a high-tech factory. At night, he spends his time in his room, alone; listening to a homemade shortwave radio to eavesdrop on conversations of people who have been able to leave their villages and make it to the big cities, where he believes anything is possible.

One night, he hears the transmissions of the security guards who patrol the area around his village to protect the dam from Aqua-Terrorists. Little does he know, his own frequency has been picked up by the water company’s headquarters in the United States and identified as a threat. He then is forced to flee north after the company bombs his village, destroying his homemade radio and his house.

Memo then travels to Tijuana, "City of the Future," where he meets an inspiring young journalist named Luz. In this new city, residents can hook themselves directed to their computer via nodes that are implanted into their body and feed thoughts directly into the computer. She has been selling her memories, a blog that comes straight from the brain, to a mysterious buyer.

She then helps Memo get his nodes so he can plug his body into the system and work in the high-tech factories. The factory workers connect their nervous system into the net to control robots that do labor on the other side of the border. Memo, Luz, and Luz’s mystery blog buyer all become connected, and a chain of events is set in motion that changes their lives forever.

Director Alex Rivera says his love of science fiction made him want to make this film. He grew up reading The Martin Chronicles and watching Star Wars. His other inspirations include films like Brazil and Blade Runner.

“However, as I got older, I realized that despite the genre's wild stories and countless special effects, there were some things that were unimaginable and that maybe there was an opportunity to do something radically new with sci-fi. Sci-fi films almost always tell outsider stories, critical stories, yet so often the heroes are police or other authority figures. With Sleep Dealer, I wanted to put a new outsider, a would-be-immigrant, at the center of the story. The futuristic world of Sleep Dealer grew organically out of my work studying political theory. While I knew I couldn't make the biggest sci-fi ever, I did want to make the 'truest' sci-fi ever. The story of Sleep Dealer is set in a fantasy future that seriously imagines where our world might go," Rivera says.

His personal background also gave him inspiration for the film since his father immigrated to the United States about fifty years ago.

“I've been horrified to see the world becoming more and more divided. Borders are violent and increasingly closed. The attacks on immigrants around the world only seem to intensify,” he said.

Rivera also explains the dynamic of the film.

“In any science fiction film, you always have at least two stars – the main character of the film, and the futuristic world itself. With Sleep Dealer I'm trying to do something we've never seen before with both. The main character, like the majority of people on planet earth today, lives in the 'third world.' In that he lives in Latin American poverty, but dreams of something better.”

The world being connected by technology, but still being divided by borders is the overall concept for the film. Immigrants no longer come to America. In Sleep Dealer, immigrants connect their bodies to the net and send their robots to do the labor.

“Sleep Dealer is my first film. It's not anything like a Star Wars or a Blade Runner. In many ways it's a humble film. But it's also an honest attempt to use science fiction to say something new, and something true about our world today,” Rivera concluded.