“BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL 2021 REVIEW: GENDERATION ★★★1/2

Self portrait with nail polish, Toronto bedroom by Bgosborne is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

When German filmmaker Monika Treut’s documentary Gendernauts came out in 1999, it was genuinely one of the first pieces of media to directly center the stories of genderqueer people and paint a picture of the associated culture in the context of San Francisco. In the original film, the subjects were free-spirited folks primarily in their 20s, excited to make their own space in a world that hadn’t even invented the word “nonbinary” yet.

In 2021, she revisited some of these individuals, now in their 40s, who reflect back on their journey with gender and discuss their main thoughts and concerns day-to-day now. This review provides a great picture of how the LGBTQ community has changed over the past two decades internally with regard to the evolution of labels for gender non-conforming people, as well as what progress has or hasn’t been made in the context of the larger society.