Filmmaker Alex Rivera‘s first feature documentary, The Sixth Section, premiered on POV in 2003. Since then, he has been working on his Sundance award-winning sci-fi thriller Sleep Dealer. The film, which A.O. Scott of the New York Times calls, “exuberantly entertaining — a dystopian fable of globalization disguised as a science-fiction adventure…” premieres in Los Angeles and New York tomorrow, April 17th.
Watch the trailer:
Sleep Dealer looks at the future from a perspective we’ve never seen before: south of the border, looking at America from the outside. It’s also a film that’s filled with lush visuals and big ideas about the future of war, immigration, the environment and the U.S.-Mexico border. In many ways, it’s related to the new trends in immigration that Alex explored in The Sixth Section, which documented a group of Mexican immigrants living and working in upstate New York sending money back to their hometown in Mexico. In Sleep Dealer, workers in Mexico connect to and operate remote-control robots in America, performing labor “off-site.” It’s a neat twist on the idea of globalization and labor, perhaps even a prescient look into the future. Sleep Dealer also shows how technology can both bring people together and divide them from one another.
Check out the Sleep Dealer website for more raves and information, and to find out where you can see the film.