Miguel Hermoso's Like Lightning offers a fresh take on a familiar scenario, the teenaged boy searching for his unknown father. Pablo is a typical teen, with a fondness for football and sneaking beers with his buddies. He enjoys a comfortable upper-middle class life with his mother (Assumpta Serna), a successful lawyer and former feminist rabble-rouser, but has a gaping hole at the core of his identity: he has no idea who his father is. Preoccupied with the question to the point of obsession, he sets out in search of answers, and finds himself on a trail that leads to the Canary Islands.

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the nun Maria is forced to flee her convent. She takes refuge in a brothel, until it is liberated by a woman's anarchist group. Maria joins the group and eventually goes to the front. The women's group faces the problems of fighting not only the nationalists, but also factions on the left seeking to impose a more traditional military structure.