Swag and swagger. The celebrity side of Sundance got all the attention this year, leading even insiders to worry that the festival has lost control of its own event. Certainly, a stroll down the main drag in Park City yielded rows of "swag lounges" where stars could be spotted feeding at the complimentary trough. But inside the theatres, a different picture emerged: 2008 turned out to be the year that Sundance returned to its roots. The best films in the US competitions restored the spirit of the festival's early days: regionally shot films on restricted budgets with new or non-actors, by film-makers more passionate about what they were shooting than where their career was heading.

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[T]he feature film that captured my attention, hands down, was Sleep Dealer, a science fiction view of a dystopian future by first-time director Alex Rivera. It was my favourite kind of sci-fi: just enough into the future for things we recognise to have become grotesque, untenable, dangerous. On the US-Mexico border, new factories harvest human energy by connecting to nodes implanted in human workers. There are armed drones and cyber-memories, computer hackers and scary reality TV shows.

Rivera's film was the opposite of the big-money movies that made the headlines ($10m for Hamlet 2, for instance), but it didn't sit with the quiet narrative dramas, either. With two awards - for screenwriting, and for contribution to science - it may have a future. I hope so. It is films like Sleep Dealer that give hope for Sundance's future. Rivera revives the promise of an American independent cinema that can intervene in our world, imagine the worst, hope for the best - and entertain like mad along the way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/jan/29/sundancefilmfestival.festivals/print

True originality and artistic verve push filmmaker Alex Rivera's future drama "Sleep Dealer," above other films in Sundance's dramatic competition. Comparisons to popular sci-fi fare like "The Matrix" are understandable but "Sleep Dealer" has more in common with the utopian politics of Fritz Lang's silent epic "Metropolis." Rivera is not content to simply dazzle with "Sleep Dealer," although he and his crew have crafted the most beautiful of films. "Sleep Dealer" is a film with lofty dramatic aspirations, an ambitious visual palette and a folksy heart. To their credit, Rivera and co-writer David Riker have come up with something unique and yet engaging; the nervy combination of social politics with future shock storytelling. While "Sleep Dealer" sometimes skips a narrative beat, it's a fantastic journey.

A scene from Alex Rivera's "Sleep Dealer." Image courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival.

Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando) lives with his family in the rural Mexican town of Santa Ana del Rio. He hates the idea of paying a large corporation high prices for small amounts of drinking water. He also wants to relocate to the mega cities he dreams about in the far corners of the world. One means of escape can be found in the workers who plug into a Tijuana-based computer center in order to remotely operate worker robots in far away factories. These node workers connect via glowing cables into a vast computer network. It's not long before Memo ends up in Tijuana although his journey becomes somewhat revolutionary in spirit.

Futuristic fantasies are well-tread genres but not the way Rivera tells the story. "Sleep Dealer" is humanist science fiction with a political manifesto at its core. Early into the film, an expansion of Rivera's short film "Why Cybraceros," it becomes clear that Rivera studied political science and media theory. While the politics behind Memo's actions may not always be crystal clear, his hope for a better life brings welcome drama to the film's expansive storytelling.

"Sleep Dealer" is a big film - a reported 450 visual effects shots led by visual effects supervisor Mark Russell. Cinematographer Lisa Rinzler uses color to full effect and animation and digital effects play a big part in the film but its standout features remain its bare bones effects of old cables and dusty computer equipment. Rivera's background is digital art and his experimental background is evident throughout "Sleep Dealer." He clearly reaches with every scene and while he sometimes fails to keep the story coherent, his artistic bravery is impressive. Rivera also edited the film so whatever "Sleep Dealer" lacks in coherence falls on his artistic shoulders. Yet, thanks to Fernando's likable screen presence, "Sleep Dealer" also retains a homespun charm and an approachable story.

"Sleep Dealer" belongs in the footsteps of Darren Aronofsky and Andrei Tarkovsky, two filmmakers who also successfully combined science fiction and human stories. But the spirit of political novelist Upton Sinclair hovers over the film and that's extraordinary. "Sleep Dealer" is a film with something to say about humanity and its relationship with technology. This sense of humanity, more than its numerous mind-blowing fantasy images is what ultimately sets "Sleep Dealer" apart.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/park_city_08_review_a_dazzling_journey_alex_riveras_sleep_dealer

"I think of it as a new branch of science fiction," says filmmaker Alex Rivera of his brilliant and bizarre-ass first film, Sleep Dealer. "In science fiction literature, you see writers that are thinking about the whole world -- in science fiction cinema, though, it's the only branch of cinema that doesn't have a world component." And with that, I feel like I know nothing about movies -- as if I'm learning about film for the very first time. That's the kind of vibe you get from Rivera, 35, and his decidedly prescient film, which premiered to raucous love at Sundance last year and is set for a theatrical release next month.

THE current crop of American films dealing with immigration is as varied as the immigrant experience itself: an ensemble melodrama about illegal aliens in Los Angeles (the recent “Crossing Over”), a quiet story of a Dominican baseball player in the minor leagues in Iowa (next month’s “Sugar”). But there are a pair that could be considered movies without borders. Both are Spanish-language features shot in Mexico by first-time American directors, and both are ambitious hybrids: socially conscious films in the form of brash genre entertainments.

Cary Fukunaga’s “Sin Nombre,” [...] combines elements of a chase movie, a gangster flick and a tragic western with the specific plight of Central American immigrants making their way across the Mexican countryside toward the United States border. Alex Rivera’s “Sleep Dealer” [...] is a science fiction parable set in a near-future Mexico, where concepts of migration and labor mobility are reinvented by cutting-edge technology.

Mr. Fukunaga’s film was indirectly inspired by the nation’s deadliest human trafficking case, which left 19 immigrants dead after they were abandoned in a sealed trailer in South Texas in 2003. He was a graduate film student at New York University at the time. Driven to visualize the horror of the incident — to “imagine what it was like in that trailer,” he said — he made a 13-minute film, “Victoria Para Chino,” which won a prize at Sundance and a Student Academy Award.