(¿Dónde están sus historias?). Pereda's remarkable feature debut introduced not only his cast of regulars-including Teresa Sánchez and Gabino Rodríguez as the eternally luckless mother-and-son duo-but also his vision of cinema, where the relationships among character, place, and time are elemental. Stuck in a farmhouse with his chronically prone grandmother, young Gabino is quickly spurred to action when his visiting uncles take a shine to the family farm, and he heads to the city to find his mother-and possibly a lawyer. The divides between city and country, wealthy and poor, mother and son, are part of Pereda's concerns, but above all Stories is a testament to capturing a sense of place, and a mood of life. Aspects of the work of other filmmakers are present here-the surreal bursts of motionless comedy of Aki Kaürismaki, the attention to rural beauty of Lisandro Alonso, etc.-but ultimately Stories is concerned entirely with its title: presenting the stories of rural Mexico, and its put-upon, ever-moving people.