In December 1988, Scott Johnson, a gay American mathematician, was found dead beneath a cliff in Sydney, Australia. His death was quickly determined to be a suicide. But Steve Johnson, Scott's older brother, had doubts and would spend the next 35 years trying to solve the mystery of Scott's death. He could have never imagined the tinderbox he would crack open—a wave of anti-gay violence, which was systematically ignored for decades.

The film follows intrepid reporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and actor/advocates Malin Akerman, Mia Farrow, Ronan Farrow, Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Ashley Judd, Blake Lively, Eva Longoria, and Alfre Woodard to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States as they uncover the harshest forms of gender-based oppression and human rights violations, as well as the effective solutions being implemented to combat them.