Sleep Dealer

Reel DVD

R4 DVD

Spanish with English subtitles

With strife currently rising along the U.S. – Mexico border once more, this film is a timely reminder that there is another side of the story.

Just slightly in the future the large corporations are taking over the world’s resources. In the village of Santa Ana del Rio the river has been dammed by a multinational. The water is sent “far away”. The local farmers must now buy water to keep their parched crops alive. Memo, the son of one of the farmers, would like to get out of the village but can’t abandon his family. He contents himself with tinkering with radio receivers. One night he picks up a transmission from a gunship pilot who belongs to the paramilitary security forces of the company that owns the dam. They are destroying “aquaterrorists” who would steal “their” water. The company also picks up Memo’s interception and next day while he is away his home is destroyed by an air attack. It is a new pilot’s first kill and he is deeply affected by the sight of Memo’s father staggering from his burning house. The pilot is then ordered to machinegun the father.

Memo knows there can be no future for him in the village so he heads for Tijuana where he hopes to find work in a “Sleep Dealer”. These are so named because if you work there long enough you will go to sleep on a shift. This can cause tremendous destruction. The workers are fitted with computer jacks called Nodes and can plug into the factory computer which in turn hires out their services over a network to operate networked robots elsewhere. Memo’s robot is constructing a skyscraper, possibly in Chicago. He will never see the results of his work since entry to the U.S. is banned. The Sleep Dealers are a way for the U.S. to get the cheap labour it needs without having to allow immigrant workers. They have now completely blocked off the Mexican border and manual labour or dangerous jobs are contracted out to the sleep dealer factories. The pay is reasonable, although heavily taxed by the multinational banks. Memo is able to send money home. The hours are long and exhausting and there is always a danger of going to sleep on the job but they are fed oxygen to keep them sharp.

Memo has met Luz, an unsuccessful writer. She is also fitted with nodes, like so much of the population, so she can download vision directly from her memories and do a voiceover on it. She has written up her meeting with Memo and is surprised to find an interested buyer. The buyer wants to know more and more about Memo. Finally he wants to meet Memo, but why?

The story expresses the hopelessness of the Mexican farmer and the lack of opportunity in their own country for those with any skills. Locked inside their own country, no longer the owner of their own resources, they are simply factory fodder for their richer neighbour to the north. We need to see more of this type of film to provide a social window into how science is affecting poorer countries. Is this the future for these countries?

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 4 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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