Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer
Thursday, March 19, 2026, 7 pm at Burning Books (420 Connecticut St, Buffalo, NY 14213)
Free or $10 suggested donation. Limited seating, first-come, first-serve
Sleep Dealer (90 minutes, 2008) is a science-fiction film set on the U.S. / Mexico border that tells the story of Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña), a young man from Mexico who dreams of coming to the United States. However, in this brave new borderland, crossing is impossible, and Memo ‘migrates’ in a new way — over the net. By connecting his body to the net Memo controls a machine that performs his labor in America, sending his pure work without the body of the worker.
A film that has gained a cult following since its release (when it was awarded awards at Sundance, the Gotham Awards, and the Berlin Film Festival), the films ideas on remote labor, unmanned war, and border maintenance remains terrifyingly prescient 18 years later.
Sleep Dealer is my first feature film. I made it, in part, because I love science fiction. I grew up watching Star Wars, Brazil and Blade Runner. However, at a certain point, 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… The paradox of a world connected by technology, but divided by borders, is the central concept of Sleep Dealer. Other present-day realities inspired my futuristic fantasy: violent reality shows like COPS, private military contractors like Blackwater, remote control drones like the Predator Drone, the trend of outsourcing jobs over the web, the impending global water crisis, and the ubiquity of video sharing sites YouTube to name a few. This is a science-fiction with many anchors in today’s reality. 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 film to say something new, and something true, about our world today. – Alex Rivera, 2008
For attendees: The screening will take place at Burning Books located at 420 Conneticut Street, Buffalo, NY 14213. Street parking is available. For transportation by bus, it is near stops for the 3, 19, 22, and 101 bus lines. Seating is first-come, first-serve.
This screening is presented as part of the series, Infiltrators: Two films by Alex Rivera, two films by Khaled Jarrar. Support for this program is provided by Teiger Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special thank you to Leo Goldsmith and Paige Sarlin.
About the filmmakers
Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization, migration, and technology. Rivera’s first feature film, Sleep Dealer, a cyberpunk thriller set on the U.S./Mexico border, won awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art, and had a commercial theatrical release in the U.S, France, Japan, and other countries. Rivera’s second feature, The Infiltrators, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Infiltrators uses documentary and scripted forms to tell the true story of Dreamers who ‘infiltrate’ a detention center to get immigrants out. Rivera is currently developing a few new cyberpunk projects and, with support from the Ford Foundation, a feature documentary on the history of deportation titled Banishment. Alex Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, Sundance Fellow, Creative Capital Grantee and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. He is an Associate Professor of Filmmaking Practice at ASU’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School.
