(L–R) Gianluca Matarrese and Dr. Maurizio Bini attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of “GEN_” at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, UT. (Photo by Donyale West/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Shelby Shaw
Premiering in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, Gianluca Matarrese’s GEN_ follows Dr. Maurizio Bini prior to his retirement from his progressive and controversial practice in Milan, Italy, at the Niguarda public hospital. There, he provides care to both patients seeking fertility treatments and patients seeking hormone treatments, including trans men and women. In a deeply religious country, Dr. Bini stands out as someone striving to help people enjoy the life they want to live, regardless of gender, sex, or age. “Doctors are not proceduralists,” he says in GEN_. “They sometimes have to make decisions between what is right and what is legal.” Many of Dr. Bini’s patients, from trans teenagers with their parents to 49-year-old women trying to conceive, have come to him after becoming frustrated with other doctors who have dismissed their concerns or desires.
Following the premiere of the film on January 24 at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, Utah, Matarrese takes the stage and welcomes Dr. Bini to join him from the crowd, to loud applause and hollers from the audience, before also inviting their producers and composer. “Dr. Bini, we made a baby together, and then we have to carry this baby together forever,” Matarrese jokes about the film.
“Yes,” Dr. Bini replies, “but I’m used to [producing] babies, I don’t see them.” He points to the screen behind him and adds, “This is the only one I have seen.”
Matarrese explains the film came about when his co-writer, Donatella Della Ratta, was in academia in Rome working on a social and political history of hormones, in vitro fertilization, and gender assignment. She was referred to Dr. Bini as someone to consult for her research. Being a good friend of Matarrese’s and knowing the films that he worked on, Della Ratta invited him to come with her to meet Dr. Bini, assuring Matarrese that he would find “a good story” to work on. GEN_, Matarrese says, is a relationship between him and Della Ratta as well as the exchange between them and Dr. Bini.
Providing a fly-on-the-wall look inside his office, GEN_ gets up close and personal through numerous check-ins and intake meetings for a diverse range of patients seeking Dr. Bini’s assistance with hormones, gender-affirming surgeries, in vitro fertilization, and sperm donors. Nonbinary people come to Dr. Bini when they want a doctor who will see them for how they want to see themselves. As they open up to Dr. Bini, we hear their stories that pour forth without shame, hesitation, or embarrassment; the openness and safety felt in Dr. Bini’s office is impressive, and his compassion for helping his patients without prejudice is remarkable.
Part of Dr. Bini’s approach to helping with the physical needs of his patients’ bodies is to also build self-confidence through intimate, yet subtle, affirmative encouragement. As he discusses options and outcomes with patients, Dr. Bini’s rhetoric includes the wisdom to stay true to oneself, to not be stopped from achieving something perfectly attainable in another location, and to accept oneself as a beautiful and miraculous person who exists both inside and outside of the mind. Speaking primarily in his native Italian, Dr. Bini is multilingual and can converse fluently with patients who require Chinese or Arabic. It seems as if very little can really stop Dr. Bini, except for retirement and, sometimes, maybe, the law.
“In Italy, things are much more difficult than in other countries,” Dr. Bini says at the post-premiere Q&A. “We have a strong religious situation,” he explains, cautiously choosing his words, only to be cut off by laughter from everyone in the room, including himself. He continues that for him, he wants to do what’s best for the patient — which is an easy viewpoint, he says, because the money is not a factor in his work, and the market is not a factor. Only the people.
In the film, Dr. Bini frequently explains to patients how they are awaiting laws in Italy that may change the options women have for seeking IVF treatments. Certain legislation may mean that Italy no longer permits the procedure, and women may need to go elsewhere in Europe where it’s available and easily accessible. Dr. Bini’s practice must navigate Italy’s laws controlling who can and cannot request reproductive assistance, which affects the trans community as well: For example, a trans man who has not had gender-affirming surgery is not allowed to give birth to a child. “Legislation shouldn’t stand in the way of human variety,” Dr. Bini says in GEN_.
