Why the 2008 Latino cyberpunk film 'Sleep Dealer' is more relevant than ever

Militarized h2o sources. Robot farmworkers. Commercialized memories. Everything is for merchantability successful Alex Rivera’s 2008 sci-fi diagnostic “Sleep Dealer,” successful which young, expendable workers from the Global South plug into machines that powerfulness the planetary economy.

Although 17 years person passed since the Latin American cyberpunk movie debuted astatine Sundance — wherever it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize — its governmental relevance has not waned. In “Sleep Dealer,” the planetary borders are closed, but U.S. corporations proceed to privatize earthy resources and exploit workers successful Mexico, wherever we find our protagonist, a Tijuana robot relation named Memo Cruz. In an America wherever immigrants are heavily relied upon for labor, yet progressively surveilled, targeted and deported expeditiously without owed process, the dystopian realm of “Sleep Dealer” feels person to our existent world than ever before.

“There’s a sadness successful the crushed the movie is surviving, due to the fact that its warnings and its insights astir the strangeness of techno-capitalism are becoming much applicable implicit time,” says Rivera. “But I’m besides blessed that the movie is lasting the trial of clip and being utilized and spoken about.”

As a Peruvian American filmmaker calved successful New York City, Rivera derived his fictional world-building from his real-life experience documenting the harrowing stories of migrants successful the United States. Since the 2008 merchandise of his diagnostic film, Rivera has stayed busy: winning a MacArthur Genius Grant and cultivating the adjacent procreation of Latino filmmakers by launching Borderland Studios astatine the Sidney Poitier New American Film School. And each the while, Rivera said, the assemblage for “Sleep Dealer” has continued to turn twelvemonth aft year. The movie precocious screened successful 35mm to a packed location astatine the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures successful Los Angeles, arsenic portion of its “Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema” series.

When Rivera and I connected via Zoom call, it felt similar we were surviving our ain dystopian world successful Los Angeles; I had conscionable finished reporting connected the Los Angeles wildfires and Rivera had returned to his location successful Pasadena aft evacuating from the Eaton fire. In our latest interview, Rivera discusses the lasting relevance of his movie and what helium hopes to animate successful viewers today.

This speech has been edited for clarity and length.

I’m not Mexican American, but I was profoundly touched arsenic idiosyncratic who exists arsenic a portion of a diaspora. What was your volition down making this movie chiefly successful Spanish?

At the opening of this process, determination was this aspiration to marque thing that had this popular civilization pulse, but post-colonial authorities ... A batch of the pleasance and the constituent of “Sleep Dealer” was to invert preconceptions astir the future. And 1 of those is the thought that the aboriginal is English, and that the English-speaking satellite is wherever the aboriginal is being built and written. That is not true. We spot it much each twelvemonth present ... the aboriginal is going to beryllium multi-lingual. And truthful the thought of doing subject fabrication successful Spanish was precise exciting, to accidental that this connection is not thing of the past, but it’s a constituent of the future.

Alex Rivera is simply a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient examining the aboriginal of enactment and workers.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

In your film, radical nary longer bash carnal labor, but they mechanically run a batch of what we spot successful the world. In “Sleep Dealer,” the main character, Memo Cruz, operates this robot remotely from Tijuana to conception a gathering successful San Diego. How bash you deliberation that added furniture of exertion successful “Sleep Dealer” exemplifies the dehumanization of migrant labour successful today’s economical workforce? The statement from some liberals and conservatives astir migrant labour is that we should legalize this radical of radical due to the fact that they supply labour to our country.

I commencement with the basal conception of the alienation of labour that surrounds america each day. The labour that goes into producing nutrient that we consume, apparel that we deterioration and the buildings that we unrecorded successful — it’s rendered invisible.

The thought of a idiosyncratic successful different region, successful different country, remotely controlling a instrumentality that’s acting and doing things present is an exaggeration oregon a heightening of that basal dynamic that surrounds us. The systems of exertion that are present connecting the satellite let for these extraordinarily utmost and heightened forms of transmission and capture. There’s ever a shade successful the machine, nary substance what a corp wants to contiguous their merchandise arsenic a transcendental object.

I privation to interaction connected the thought of exertion arsenic a signifier of transportation and disconnection. We spot Memo trying to get the nodes successful his tegument truthful that helium tin beryllium connected to this planetary economy. Installing exertion nether our tegument isn’t commonplace (yet), but I spot a batch of parallels betwixt however Memo experiences integer apartheid successful his satellite and ours. Just similar if you don’t person net successful your town, past you are unopen retired of this planetary economy. There are ways that exertion tin exacerbate existing inequalities.

Memo’s household is from Oaxaca, wherever a immense corp has militarized a dam upstream. All of the earthy resources are being guarded heavy due to the fact that of climate-induced scarcity. As you were making this film, however were you reasoning astir clime change?

Those ideas each came from a elemental thesis: that capitalism is amoral and volition gobble up thing it’s allowed to gobble up. In this world, capitalism has tally wild, captured everything, adjacent the water, and packaged it to merchantability it backmost to radical from whom it was taken. But past that benignant of reasoning rolled retired and applied to things similar our memories. Could our memories beryllium bottled similar h2o and sold? What astir our friendships? Our relationships, our time, etc. So this benignant of logic of capture, enclosure and commodification is the rationale that binds unneurotic each of the world-building of “Sleep Dealer.”

We besides spot Rudy Ramirez, a combatant drone pilot, rebelling against his directives. He is Mexican American, but helium is besides an limb of the unit connected radical who look similar him. How bash you marque consciousness of that arsenic we see the limitations of individuality authorities today?

I find individuality authorities broadly to beryllium the lone mode to marque consciousness of American history. You can’t truly recognize the United States, its past and its present, without looking astatine the mode that contention has been structured and formed successful this state and deployed to make friction and contention among the moving class.

It is existent that Black and brownish radical get swept up successful the imperial halfway and go the enforcers of the authorities that perpetuates their exclusion and inequality. Rudy is depicted arsenic an cause of the empire, but there’s a responsibility enactment successful his being.

We spot that successful our ain families of color, who articulation the constabulary and the equipped forces of colour and are often dispatched to lands that person suffered violence. So the Latino household uprooted due to the fact that of the U.S. and CIA-backed civilian warfare successful El Salvador, coming here, giving commencement to a lad oregon a daughter, who past joins the equipped forces and is dispatched backmost to the Global South. These kinds of circles, we spot them successful our families. It’s a world that’s affluent and complicated, due to the fact that individuality is not abstract.

In the movie you person “coyoteks,” a futuristic mentation of coyotes who smuggle radical crossed the borderline to go migrant laborers successful the U.S. These coyoteks are besides facilitating a transportation of labour by illegally implanting these nodes nether their skin. Can you speech a small spot much astir your inspiration?

[Melvin Kranzberg] erstwhile said, “Technology is not good. Technology is not bad. It’s besides not neutral.”

Technology is simply a signifier oregon a signifier that enables definite things and disables others, and there’s country to navigate, but determination are besides constraints. That was the doctrine of “Sleep Dealer.” These technologies, erstwhile released into capitalism, are instantly deployed to make forms of alienation, extraction and hyper-profit to make conditions successful which corporations and capitalists tin determination with easiness and accelerate their work.

But those forces aren’t the lone ones that situation these technologies. Other impulses situation them: the impulse to not beryllium alone, to perceive a loved one’s voice, to link with different radical who stock your individuality radical and governmental commonalities.

When I was processing “Sleep Dealer,” I was precise alert of however the Pentagon and corporations were utilizing exertion ... but besides however the Zapatistas utilized it, however the World Social Forum utilized it and however I was utilizing it each time successful my life. So the depiction of exertion successful the movie is meant to beryllium 1 of exertion arsenic a benignant of battlefield with a almighty inclination towards alienation and extraction.

But the communicative is not over. There is abstraction successful which to hack, to conflict and to make alternatives and portion these technologies retired of the capitalist cradle wherever they were born, to usage them for different things.