Dante travels across a desolate, futuristic Spain in search of his girlfriend, Ula. He is pursued by a bloodthirsty, cybernetic Rottweiler.

Five years after their summer together in Barcelona, Xavier, William, Wendy, Martine and Isabelle reunite.

Set in Catalonia, Painless weaves two stories: in one, starting during the Spanish Civil War and running through to the ’60s, an asylum attempts to rehabilitate children who feel no pain, by teaching them physical suffering. In the second, in the present time, a brilliant neurosurgeon who needs a bone marrow transplant, discovers this dark past when he searches for his biological parents.