Cure for Love
2008 · 59m · Canada
Directed by Francine Pelletier, Christina Willings
Genres: documentary, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender
Young gay Christians enter an evangelical movement claiming to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality, caught between their sexuality and their religious beliefs.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects righteous anger from a doc about conversion therapy, but Pelletier and Willings refuse the sermon—they just sit with these kids in their actual contradiction, which is somehow more unsettling than any polemic could be.
A formally restrained documentary that locates its power in what it doesn't say, structured around intimate testimony that builds a devastating case through accumulation rather than argument—the kind of measured filmmaking that lingers in the body.
The real move here is the sound design in the silences between confessions—how the filmmakers let the acoustic space breathe around these young people's voices, making vulnerability feel like the only honest response to an impossible question.