'Pain and Glory' tells of a series of re-encounters experienced by Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), a film director in his physical decline. Some of them in the flesh, others remembered: his childhood in the '60s, when he emigrated with his parents to a village in Valencia in search of prosperity, the first desire, his first adult love in Madrid of the '80s, the pain and breakup of that love while it was still alive and intense, writing as the only therapy to forget the unforgettable, the early discovery of cinema, and the void, the infinite void that creates the incapacity to keep on making films.