There’s a certain structure that drives many queer stories — a narrative about discrimination (either institutional or individual) slowly morphs into a tale about struggle, sacrifice and activism. Cured, a documentary following the journey of activists who aim to get the DSM to stop classifying homosexuality as an illness, broadly follows this arc. This is a bit of a double-edged sword; while Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer’s film manages to shine a light on a chapter in the ongoing struggle for queer liberation that might not be common knowledge to a lot of people, some of the nuances and legacies of this kind of discrimination end up becoming something of a footnote. It’s unrealistic to expect every queer film to tackle all aspects of queer life and history, but Cured presents its narrative in a way that’s too clean and neat, too much of a happily-ever-after.

Of course, this is a happy ending that’s truly earned. Even decades after-the-fact, the story of Cured is presented with the kind of urgency that activist art needs; the film is unafraid to look at the stark reality of the ways in which the institutions of science and medicine treated queerness. It shows everything from the talking cure — which itself is shown as forming the bedrock of a bias against queerness — to electroshock therapy and lobotomies. One scene even shows a brief interview with a lobotomy patient who attempts to articulate why he got the procedure in the first place. Seeing the reality of the recent past makes the film’s narrative and message feel urgent, and the slightly different angle of approach helps Cured stand out among films about the struggle for early queer liberation. One of the things that animates these activists the most is the fact that changing DSM definitions of homosexuality is about, as much as anything else, self-love; one of the film’s talking heads acknowledges this, saying “it was no longer acceptance, it was self-acceptance. And in that difference comes the revolution.” It’s about challenging the burden associated with your identity being labelled a sickness, and about taking to task a body of knowledge that’s rife with biases and inaccuracies.

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Cured goes to great lengths to situate its story within a certain moment in both culture and politics. It foregrounds the ways in which the church called queerness sinful — something that still continues today — and how governments were dismissive at best, repressive at worst. There are a few montages in Cured that explore these moments of cultural conservatism and the influx of admittedly incremental change that came in the wake of Stonewall. This culture is used as a way to inform the prevailing approach in therapy and medicine; just after showing the title card for Father Knows Best, Sammon and Singer show a discussion of psychiatry and homosexuality rooted in the cliched tropes of an absent father somehow creating queerness in children, falling back on the adage that “father knows best.” Later in the film, there’s another montage, one that challenges the image of culture put forward by the first one; offhand referencing to gay characters in programs like The Mary Tyler Moore Show. One of the things that most animates Cured is the relationship that culture and institutions have with one another, and it shines a light on the fact that, at the dawn of liberation, queer life was being attacked on multiple fronts.

The narrative of Cured illustrates one of the most powerful and liberating things that activism can do: give people the platforms and powers through which they’re able to speak for themselves. One of the key moments in the film comes when an openly gay doctor, in a grotesque mask (John E. Fryer, under the guise of Dr. Henry Anonymous), delivers a speech challenging the psychiatric knowledge up to this point, foregrounding the importance of humanity, and the cost — in queer health, happiness and lives — that came from the policies and decisions pursued by these institutions. The core of this speech, and the part of it that speaks most eloquently to the ways in which Cured explores the power and possibility of activism, can be seen in the lines “several of us feel that it is time that real flesh and blood stand up before this organisation and asked to be listened to and understood, insofar as that is possible.” These lines feel like they strike at the heart of activism, and at what Cured is trying to do: to let real flesh and blood, the people who lived through these moments, be heard and understood. In hindsight, with the activists giving testimonies directly to the camera, this power of letting real flesh and blood be heard and understood feels even more powerful, highlighting one of the most surprising things about stories of queer activism: those who lived to tell the tale.

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Like a lot of stories that share its narrative beats, Cured ends on a moment of euphoria, however the postscript threatens to undo some of the documentary’s good work. The continued discrimination from science and medicine becomes a kind of footnote in the way that the film mentions the outdated term Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the relationship between trans rights and medical institutions. Cured asks a lot of questions about what people do with their victories, and while there’s joy and catharsis in seeing these victories celebrated, the way they echo through to the present and future is a little lost in translation. The argument is made that queer doctors not having to say that they’re queer is the real victory, but that in itself feels divisive as mainstream institutions and queer liberation continue to find themselves at odds with one another — seen most clearly, and dangerously, in recent debates around trans youth getting access to puberty blockers in the UK — and for a film that so effectively illustrates the power and need for activism, it feels like a missed opportunity that Cured doesn’t take a little time to tee up the next chapter in queer liberation. While it shines an important light on a historical moment that’s easy to forget and ignore, Cured occasionally threatens to undo its own work and activism by assuming that one victory is enough to stop fighting altogether.