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Young and upcoming film maker, Alex Rivera’s first feature length film, Sleep Dealer hits the theaters this weekend. Not your average science-fiction film, Sleep Dealer is set on the border between the US and Mexico at a time when workers sell their virtual cheap labor across borders without actually crossing them, poor people sell their memories for a living, and corporations have succeeded in near-complete privatization of everything. Memo Cruz, a young man living in a dusty rural village in Mexico, taps into wireless communications as a hobby, accidentally leading him into the dangerous world of the so-called Sleep Dealers. The film breaks many barriers, including being almost entirely in Spanish (with English subtitles). Alex Rivera, who has no formal film training, spent over a decade making the film, which won major recognition at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, capturing the coveted Alfred P Sloan award. The New York Times called the film, “exuberantly entertaining, a dystopian fable of globalization disguised as a science-fiction adventure… with intellectual clarity and storytelling discipline.” Sleep Dealer is being distributed by Maya Entertainment, a Latino-run company, that has enabled KPFK listeners to help raise funds for the station through 30% of all the sale prices of all tickets whose stubs are turned in. More information about the KPFK funding at www.kpfk.org. I spoke with Alex Rivera earlier this week.

GUEST: Alex Rivera, writer and director of Sleep Dealer.

If you watch the film you’ll be helping raise funds for KPFK. When you purchase a movie ticket between April 17-19th KPFK will receive 30% of the sale IF you drop off your ticket stub at KPFK or Imix Bookstore in Eagle Rock; or mail them to the station, attention “Sleep Dealer.” Check www.kpfk.org for more details.