Pereda’s feature debut, winner of Best Mexican Feature at the Guadalajara Film Festival, is a compelling portrait of family relations in urban Mexico today. Combining genre elements of slacker films with melodrama, the film follows working-class layabout Gabino, who constantly fights with his mother while he hustles with a friend. Gabino’s brother doesn’t bother to visit their mom, whose own mother is left unattended in an apartment. To this he adds elements of the “city film”— Gabino’s work gives him—and us—the opportunity to visit the lives of Mexicans of all classes. Pereda is an anti-glamour director; everything about his characters and their situations ring true.