Maya Entertainment acquires Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer.

Maya Entertainment announced that it has acquired United States distribution rights to Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, a futuristic Sci-Fi feature, which recently received the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, as well as the Amnesty International Film Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Sleep Dealer, which was produced by Anthony Bregman for Likely Story in association with “This is That,” is the fifth feature film acquired by Maya Entertainment, a newly launched distribution company focusing on the distribution of Latino -themed films in the U.S. and globally. Maya Entertainment will release the film nationally, including the top 25 Hispanic markets.

The deal was negotiated by Jose Martinez, Jr., Head of Acquisitions, and Tonantzin Esparza, Director of Acquisitions for Maya Entertainment, along with attorney Andrew Hurwitz and UTA agent Bec Smith, representing the film’s producer Anthony Bregman and director Alex Rivera.

“We are thrilled we have the opportunity to work with Alex Rivera, a talented young filmmaker who has created this extraordinary film and captured the universal themes of survival and resistance within today’s global economy,” says Martinez. “Not unlike ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth,’ SLEEP DEALER employs science fiction and fantasy to deliver a radical message about our society,”

“I am very excited about working with Maya Entertainment. With their niche marketing and understanding, Sleep Dealer will reach a wider audience.” stated Bregman.

Rivera’s first feature film, Sleep Dealer is set in the near future in which borders are closed, but technology knows no bounds. In this future, workers in places like Mexico no longer cross borders to work. Instead they connect their bodies to the net, and from sweatshop-like factories in the south, control machines that perform their labor in the north. Sleep Dealer depicts globalization taken to an absurd extreme: the U.S. receives “All the work – without the workers,” as one character in the film explains.

Memo Cruz begins his journey as a young farmer trying to survive in poverty stricken Santa Ana del Rio, Oaxaca Mexico, a place where U.S. based corporations and the military control the price of water, making it impossible for Memo and his family to maintain their crops. At night, alone in his room, Memo escapes the boredom of his village via a homemade radio intercept that lets him eavesdrop on conversations. One night, while using his homemade radio, Memo stumbles upon the communications of the security forces that patrol the area around his village, hunting ‘Aqua-Terrorists.’

Unknown to him, or his family, Memo is caught in the crosshairs.

Memo is forced to realize his dream of leaving Santa Ana when his radio – and his home – is destroyed in a reckless remote control bombing. With the hope of helping his family start over, Memo heads north – towards a bizarre and troubling future. Memo’s journey is a reflection of today’s political and economic climate and touches on several current issues such as globalization, outsourcing, immigration, corporate power, and a the “War on Terror.”