27/01/2025 - Gianluca Matarrese returns with a thought-provoking and humanistic film on an intersection of medical, ethical and cultural issues, guided by its remarkable protagonist

The title of the latest documentary by versatile Paris-based Italian director Gianluca Matarrese (The Zola Experience [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gianluca Matarrese
film profile]), refers to the prefix related to terms that its hero, Dr Maurizio Bini, deals with in his work: genes, genitals, gender, genetics… In the tightly structured and incisive GEN_ [+see also:
interview: Gianluca Matarrese
film profile], enjoying its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance, we follow the doctor as he navigates between the needs of his patients and Italy’s turbulent cultural and political landscape, at the public Niguarda Hospital in Milan, where he is the Head of Diagnosis and Therapy of Sterility and Cryopreservation. 

Through paradoxical circumstances that are a trademark of our era, Bini’s unique department deals both with assisted reproduction and gender affirming care. The film consists of a series of conversations with patients, filmed by Matarrese in profile, ranging from medium-wide shots to close-ups. There is always a blurry shadow on the borders of the frame, as if the camera were obstructed by an object or the edges of a window. This approach warns us of the intimate nature of the conversations, but there is no reason for us to doubt the director’s ethics or that the subjects consented to being filmed. 

Nearing the end of his career, a man in his sixties and in excellent form, sympathetic, likeable and remarkably erudite (even managing a conversation in Mandarin), Dr Bini openly discusses the sensitive issues at play with his patients and staff. Italy’s increasingly conservative laws now limit artificial insemination after the woman’s age of 46, but the doctor decided to go ahead with the procedure as his patient has been waiting for so long. “We are doctors, not bureaucrats,” he says.  

His outlook and approach are deeply humanistic and he has an excellent grip on psychology, as well as a playful sense of humour. Many patients exploring their gender identity are very young and, with a kind smile, he tells teenage twins that sex change at 16-17 years of age is “the bestselling product”. As a young trans man struggles to keep tears in, the doctor quips that it’s now trendy for men to cry. In a phone conversation, he wonders why Ukrainian embryos are regularly preserved in European hospitals but no one mentions those from Gaza. 

Other complex ethical and psychological, culturally specific issues are touched upon: in Italy, freezing the sperm is considered normal while cryopreservation of women’s eggs is a taboo for many; an Italian-Brazilian couple would prefer a donor of lighter skin to make it easier for the man’s family to accept the baby. 

Between these main sections of the doctor at work around the hospital, we see him pick mushrooms in the forests of Lombardy, sequences that add another curious layer to the story. These short, calm scenes are accompanied by Matarrese’s regular collaborator Cantautoma’s jazzy, playful score, mirroring the protagonist’s vivacious spirit. In a surreal but psychologically apt scene, a violist from La Scala plays for the frozen embryos: Dr Bini took a page out of animal behaviour studies showing that cows give more milk when exposed to Bach’s music. Matarrese has created a thought-provoking and deeply humanistic film precisely because these qualities drive his protagonist.

GEN_ is a co-production between France’s Bellota Films, Italy’s Stemal Entertainment and Switzerland’s Elefant Films. Mediawan Rights handles the film's international sales.