There is something humbling about watching Sue Williams’ documentary Denise Ho: Becoming the Song. Williams has a resume full of PBS documentaries about American and Chinese history. And she finds something big and political in this musician’s life. Sure, like every rock documentary, it goes through the important parts of the titular Cantonese pop star’s life. It dedicates enough time like her family’s immigration from Hong Kong to Montreal and her rise to fame.

But Ho pivots from music to activism against authoritarian mainland China, and in doing so she risks losing her revenue. Censorship eventually separates Ho from her Chinese fans. Those fans can be sexually and political subversive. But it would be nice to have a role model like her, a lesbian musician, who embodies those values. The documentary mostly succeeds in balancing Ho’s life both as a musician and an activist. There is enough concert footage here. And there is something touching about hearing her fans joke around with her.

There’s levity in hearing her having trouble when singing songs that mean a lot to her emotionally. The documentary, then shows the contrast between her present day. Now, she performs for smaller venues to members of the Chinese diaspora. However, in her early years she performed in Hong Kong and mainland stadiums. In both stages of her career, the emotional weight of her songs is present. Most of her songs are in Cantonese, obviously. But it lets non-Cantonese speakers know about her lyrics through cursive hand-drawn intertitles, making those lyrics feel intimate.

It then mixes that concert footage with archives of the politics around her. The documentary plays around timelines, showing her return to Hong Kong as Anita Mui’s backup singer. Coincidentally, that’s when the United Kingdom returns the island to Chinese sovereignty. Many citizens of Hong Kong protested the handover, worried about losing their freedoms. And the film frames those protests not just as something that influenced. Showing those protests is an acknowledgement that there are things bigger than her, China’s biggest popstar.

As good as this documentary is, there is that cultural barrier between Chinese and Western pop culture. It is not necessarily the best at explaining why this concert is more subversive than that. And Ho’s interview segments contextualizing some of these performances do not help. It leaves us stranded with esoteric symbolism. She does a cover of Queen’s Somebody to Love, which, again, is not enough to tell us anything.

But the documentary is at its meatiest when it shows the political side of both Ho and her city. Helping her on that front are academics and fellow activists, and Ho generously lends them screen time. It also shows the mix of opinions between citizens who are for and against the protests. This plurality teaches lessons from one activist movement to another, helping a pop star into becoming a sincere political activist.