Set against the backdrop of Catalonia, “Painless” intertwines two narratives. The first begins during the Spanish Civil War and extends into the 1960s, focusing on an institution’s efforts to rehabilitate children incapable of feeling pain by instructing them in the experience of physical suffering. The second narrative unfolds in the present day, following a gifted neurosurgeon in need of a bone marrow transplant, who uncovers this unsettling history while searching for his biological parents.