In a near-future world not far different from today, a young resident of a remote Mexican village named Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña) taps into a security network where officials are discussing the problem of “Aqua Terrorism.” The catastrophic fallout from this eavesdropping forces him to leave town for Tijuana, where he joins an underground society of workers whose jobs are done virtually, through nodes implanted in the upper body. This work carries a heavy price, however, as these laborers slowly go blind from the goggles they wear in order to “commute.” In desperate need of cash for himself and to send home, Memo gets a “node job” thanks to a mysterious woman named Luz (Leonor Varela) and receives his first employment on a high-rise building. Meanwhile, Luz begins to record and store her memories of Memo, and the events that transpired in his hometown begin to catch up with him. This plot outline should make it clear that digital media artist Rivera's first feature is ambitious, ingenious, and extremely topical. Issues of labor outsourcing, memory cooptation, and water scarcity mingle with the dystopian science fiction parables of Huxley and Orwell and the way-out visions of The Matrix or Existenz. The film's imagery is vibrant and trippy, demonstrating that nifty visual effects do not need a multimillion-dollar budget. And through its focus on characters who are not privileged and not English speaking, Sleep Dealer makes the point that these are the people on whom the future and all of its perils will weigh the hardest.