Using a combination of interviews and archival footage including live band performances, the film traces the life and career of Hanna from her troubled upbringing and her start in spoken word performance poetry, through her riot grrrl zines, her prominent punk and dance-punk bands, her coining of the phrase "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for Kurt Cobain, her solo career as Julie Ruin, her feminist activism, her marriage to Beastie Boys member Adam Horovitz, and ending with Hanna's 2010 diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease and the severe treatments she endures to combat it.

Anderson funded the film through various ways, initially with a benefit concert including Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon performing at the Knitting Factory and then through a Kickstarter campaign which raised $46,000.

[2][12][13] Since 2005, Hanna had been struggling with symptoms of the disease without knowing the cause; this resulted in her telling her Le Tigre bandmates that she was finished as a singer/songwriter, that she had written all she ever intended to write.

[14] In the film Hanna says that this explanation was not true, that instead she was suffering nervous system troubles and that she did not want to admit she was unable to perform on stage.

She told Anderson not to feature Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Ian MacKaye of Fugazi, or Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, even though she liked them and respected their opinions.