Having pen pals was the dating platform of the seventies. At least for Abu Bakr Shawky's parents, who grew closer in an exchange of fragile airmail letters between Vienna and Cairo. The Egyptian-Austrian filmmaker employs a time frame of approximately twenty years to study history and stories, especially those of his parents. With political interventions in the background, the focus is on family legends endlessly revisited and embroidered. Nostalgic in appearance, humorous in tone, THE STORIES is a tragi-comic saga of winning and losing and the wheel of history that keeps on turning.