When Heti’s mother, Ana, dies, Heti moves in a daze until her grief is upended by the arrival of an unmarked package containing photographs of Ana as a young woman --- pointing a gun at a group of sobbing women. FEMALE LIFE ON PLANET EARTH follows Heti as she raises teenage daughters, keeps up with client accounts, sits in LA traffic and prepares to host the traditional anniversary memorial --- all while quietly reeling with the violent secrets of the woman she thought she knew. Heti is buoyed as she listens to the women who populate her world. Inside these surprising, uproarious stories of female life, Heti discovers the selves women hide away, selves defiantly in search of pleasure, autonomy, delight and connection. As the one-year mark of Ana’s death arrives, Heti calls together the women who knew her and asks them: Who was my mother, truly? And who are we?

Laguna Beach, California, 2010. Alireza Courdee, a 14-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner. For the first time, Reza --- now Rez --- feels like an American teen. But then he changes again, falling out with the bad boy surfers and in with a group of kids more awake to the world around them, who share his background and whose ideas fill him with a very different sense of purpose. Within a year, Reza and his girlfriend are making their way to Syria to be part of a Muslim nation rising from the ashes of the civil war.