a fascinating futuristic film by Alex Rivera that delves into the life of a young Mexican from Oaxaca who unwittingly brings down drone-death from the skies and then flees to Tijuana to have black-market nodes surgically implanted into his body so as to be able to provide “virtual” sweat-shop labor.
Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña) lives in a small Mexican village and dreams of escaping his poverty by working for hi-tech factories that service the big cities of the U.S. He uses his homemade radio to eavesdrop in on conversations between other people like him who’ve made the transition. His radio also intercepts a communication by the patrolling security forces involving “Aqua-Terrorists” and this results in a remote-controlled drone being dispatched to blow up his house.
A fascinating web of interconnections follow this deadly act. It leads to literal connections between Memo and wires that plug his nervous system into a network that controls robots laboring on the other side of the border. This is because the prosperous big cities want the cheap labor without having to deal with the actual people who provide it. But the “virtual” work is dangerous stuff, and the people connecting into the system are often pushed to the point of collapse; ergo the factory employers being dubbed “Sleep Dealers.”
+ at moviemorlocks
