Sleep Dealer is a small yet ambitious film with the potential to build bridges in the ongoing controversy over undocumented workers in the United States. If successful, this movie could make people on different sides of the issue realize that they have a common foe: U.S. foreign trade policies (something that even Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader have been agreeing upon publicly for years.)
The movie is told primarily through the eyes of Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Pena), whose small village in Oaxaca Mexico is rendered uninhabitable by U.S. economic and military intervention. The young man is forced to leave his home and community so he can find a way to support his family.
Meanwhile, an American, who has participated in his government's foreign policies, begins to question the role he is playing.
Sleep Dealer is set in an unspecified time in the future. U.S. companies still use Mexican workers to save money—but through virtual reality centers based in Mexico (called Sleep Dealers) in tandem with robots located at American workplaces (including constructions sites and slaughterhouses). Thus, the labor crosses the border, but the people don't.
Virtual reality has other applications, too: it allows people to share thoughts while making love (an ability that was supposed to come naturally to Star Trek's sadly underutilized character of Ilia, as conceived for the Lost Series).
Sleep Dealer is the first feature by writer-director Alex Rivera, whose prior work has included documentaries, such as la sexta seccion (The Sixth Section) (2003), and short films including the animated Why Cybraseros? (1997), in where he introduced his notion of outsourcing vis-a-vis virtual reality. Rivera himself grew up in America, but his father immigrated from Peru. A lifelong fan of science fiction films including Star Wars (the very first film he saw), Blade Runner, and Brazil, he worked with production designer Miguel Alvarez (Y tu mama Tambien) to visualize Sleep Dealer's robots.
Rivera pointed out that while the film is only 90 minutes long, it took 12 year to make. “I'm 36 years old now--I was about 24 years old when I had this idea,” he laughed. After he came up with the concept, it took him four years to get a script into presentable form. (By his own admission dramatic scriptwriting was not part of his early background.) He was then able to attract the attention of various movers and shakers, including Sigourney Weaver and people at the Sundance Institute. Sundance also helped Rivera make the transition from documentary and short-subject filmmaker to feature film director. “They have a famous film festival, but they also have this set of workshops for young filmmakers to come in and practice. I met my producer there named Anthony Bregman.” In the ensuing years, he continued revising the script in his spare time while working on other projects. The financing was finally secured in 2005, production commenced in 2006, editing took place in his kitchen during 2007, and the film debuted at Sundance in 2008. Sleep Dealer will finally open for the general public on Friday April 17, 2009.
The project was shot primarily in Mexico: Mexico City was used to depict a somewhat more developed Tijuana of the future (e.g., an elevated train in Mexico City is visible in various shots) as well as for the movie's interiors; Queretaro represented the fictitious Oaxacan village of Santa Ana del Rio; and Tijuana functioned as a location, particularly for scenes set at the border wall.
Sleep Dealer's international crew was reflected in its visual effects. Under the supervision of Mark Russell, this work was carried out in New York by Brett Miller of the Creative Group (who was largely responsible for the construction site robots), Geraldine Juarez of Eyebeam, and Edgeworx (under John Bair); in India by Anibrain India; in Mexico City by Ollin Studio (which was responsible for drone attack planes that appear in the film and some of the digital set extensions); and in China by a sister company of the Creative Group. Some of the CG shots represent combined efforts of artists on different continents: the robot construction workers were detailed by modelers in China but animated by Miller in New York.
When watching the final product, Rivera finds himself thinking “'I wish I could change that, I wish I could change that,' but it's a film that I made with a lot of passion.”
Fortunately, even in this society, which tends to obsess over technical perfection, Sleep Dealer is being received with a fair amount of enthusiasm. Any technical shortcomings are offset by content, imagination, and artistry.
Trailer:
