In post–civil war Spain, 10-year-old Ofelia moves with her pregnant mother to live under the control of her cruel stepfather. Drawn into a mysterious labyrinth, she meets a faun who reveals that she may be a lost princess from an underground kingdom. To return to her true father, she must complete a series of surreal and perilous tasks that blur the line between reality and fantasy.

The film centres on Moncho and his coming-of-age experience in Galicia in 1936. Moncho develops a close relationship with his teacher Don Gregorio who introduces the boy to different things in the world. While the story centres on Moncho's ordinary coming-of-age experiences, tensions related to the looming Spanish Civil War periodically interrupt Moncho's personal growth and daily life.

Irene lives with Mateo, his father, and her son David, 22 years old. Living together is harmonious and happy, but there is a conflict: David, a brilliant student of architecture, has decided to go and live with his girlfriend Clara, a supermarket cashier. Despite its liberal way of thinking, Irene cannot understand such an unequal relationship. However, David finds in his grandfather the necessary complicity to carry out his plans. Mateo is a old and vital octogenarian despite his tough history: he was a child during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and he lost his house and all his family. But none of that could finish with his energy and desire to live. One day, however, Mateo arrives with terrible news.

Paloma is a young psychiatrist, who is hired to work as a director of a clinic in Galicia, and is attracted to Mario, her very first patient. He suffers from a rare form of amnesia, commonly known as Korsakov's syndrome. As a result, both his short and long term memories are affected, and he has temporary lapses of perception. However, Paloma finds Mario to be a fascinating individual, not just a regular patient. Intrigued, she decides to explore Mario's past and, through their dialogues, their relationship takes an unexpected turn.

Jacobo is a young sculptor that returns to native city, Santiago of Compostela, to see his mother, locked up a psychiatric hospital for to kill to her husband, when he believed she dead years ago. To their arrival, visions of Mateo, his dead father eighteen years ago, begin to persecute to him, since his father died by shot gun, peculiarly, when thirteen peals sounded in the cathedral, fact what obsesses to Jacobo. After watching several times, Mateo convinces his son to make the work for the cathedral that his father couldn't finish in life, but what begins as a simple work becomes a madness spiral when Jacobo discovers the true intentions of the ghost of his father: to kill to his son to usurp his body to finish the statue, and after to return to the life.

A wealthy woman twice widowed, lives with his family and two servants in a shady country house in Galicia in the late nineteenth century isolated from the world to hide a serious incident occurred in the family ten years earlier. This event is subject to certain blackmail the family of which will be released by the arrival at the mansion of two strangers who triggered the investigation of the facts and a change in the future family life.