Nicolò Bassetti, Italian director, presents at the Berlin Film Festival 2022, a valuable documentary on the transgender issue, In My Name.

The documentary, is the training story of four friends who share the most important turning points of their lives and their gender transformations. Born into a gender that didn’t belong to them, they built their identities by surviving the obstacles of a binary society. A subject that the director knows very well and has experienced firsthand with his son Matteo.

The idea was born after a letter that the director received from his son, in which the latter communicates to his father that he wants to leave the female shores forever to begin the difficult path of transition. The director tries to tell what he has experienced firsthand and what is faced by a boy who in today’s society feels he does not belong to his own body, through the documentary.

In the stories of the protagonists of the documentary are told all the difficulties that in reality live those who decide to make the transition: discussions with the partners, the choice of pronouns to use, hormone therapy, decisions on surgery, the relationship with the authorities and health services, the relationship with peers and public opinion. Emphasizing that in the purely binary world in which we live, the decision to determine one’s gender identity is a subversive, almost revolutionary act.

In my name therefore gives voice to the 4 boys who describe their path to the affirmation of their gender identity with the barriers they encountered to make the social, physical and legal changes.

The director also decided to involve a key figure in this project, actor Elliot Page, first known as Ellen,  as executive producer who said: “What strikes me about In My Name is that it presents in such an artistic and intentional way all the different pieces that compose a person’s identity. It’s a meditation on trans humanity and I’ve never seen another film like it”.