To the outside world Joanne is just a book-store owner, but the Conspiracy knows different. She's dangerous. She's a bellwether a quiet leader who is well on her way to being her whole self. When they kidnap her to break her to make her conform, they discover that Joanne is something so much more than even she ever knew. Joanne is a feminist, one-room, one-character elevated genre thriller. It is a modern rite of passage story which most women have to go through to become a whole human being How does one be oneself in the face of massive misogyny and hatred (both overt and institutionalized). It is also the world's first one-person film (a movie with only one on-screen character) that features a woman.
For her first day of orientation, Dr. Tristian Mackenzie makes her way to the Silverdale Psychiatric Hospital for the criminally insane, where she learns of the strange series of cases from the similarly strange Dr. Moon.