Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line. You have your own internal world, and it’s not neat.
—Patti Smith

Punk poetess Patti Smith is profiled in this highly anticipated feature documentary by first-time filmmaker Steven Sebring.

Following the fiercely original musician for nearly a decade, Sebring avoids any direct chronological or dramatic approaches to Smith's life and art.

Instead he achieves a rich collage of present and past in the poet's world, including her relationships with the late controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and playwright/actor Sam Shepard. At the centre of the film, of course, is Smith's extraordinary music, which electrified the world from 1975 onward when her stunning debut album Horses prepared the ground for the 1970s alternative music movement.