[2][3][4][5] The film is based around interviews recorded on audio cassettes through the 1970s by Linda Lipnack Kuehl, researching a book on Holiday that was never completed because of Kuehl's death in 1978: her body was found on a Washington D.C. street, and she was deemed to have died by suicide, although that supposition is disputed by her family.

[6][7][8] Erskine's documentary "is about both Holiday — as told through the voices of people who knew her — and Kuehl's obsession with crafting her biography.

[7] Prominent figures from the jazz world who contributed recollections include Count Basie, Charles Mingus, Jo Jones and Sylvia Syms.

[9][10] In The Guardian, the film was characterised as "a raw, unsanitised character study, in which Holiday is both combative and vulnerable, coy and revolutionary: a fiery, foul-mouthed thrill-seeker who never sacrificed her integrity.

Billie Holiday lived so fast that few biographers appear able to keep with up her, but Erskine and Kuehl’s combined effort amounts to a long, loving look from a distance.