If/Then

Egg freezing has quietly revolutionised reproductive medicine, yet its origins and the woman scientist behind the technology remains largely unknown. IF/THEN spotlights Dr Debra Gook, the Australian cyrofertility pioneer whose life’s work has benefited millions of people worldwide. As she faces retirement, Dr Gook’s career and achievements are revealed, alongside the woman behind the scientific breakthroughs.

The film also examines the deeply personal pressures women navigate around motherhood and identity – told through two women using Dr Gook’s technology for vastly different reasons: one by choice, one following cancer treatment. Together, these stories interrogate what society expects of women, what science makes possible, the additional complexities LGBTQIA+ people navigate in family planning and, for all three women, they discuss what a meaningful legacy looks like for themselves.

IF/THEN works toward a world where women’s reproductive decisions are understood as complex, culturally shaped experiences.

By centering Dr Debra Gook’s pioneering but largely unknown work, the film restores an overlooked woman in STEM to public consciousness while revealing the gap between empowerment narratives around egg freezing and lived reality.

Through Chloe’s reckoning with expectations, and Tina’s navigation of post-cancer treatment LGBTQIA+ family formation, the film challenges the framing of motherhood versus career that dominates mainstream discourse.

The world after this film exists is one where fertility preservation is recognised as serving diverse needs across medical necessity, relationship circumstances, and societal pressure. Where women define meaningful lives on their own terms and where technology can have deeper impacts than the purpose of its invention.

IF/THEN has three goals:

First, to bring Dr Gook the recognition she deserves. We want audiences to know her name and understand the value of her contributions in choosing broad access over patenting her protocols. Her story needs to be told before it disappears.

Second, to offer solidarity to anyone navigating their own fertility journey. For viewers who have frozen eggs, faced medical preservation, or grappled with questions about motherhood and what they actually want versus what society prescribes, we want the film to share experiences rarely reflected authentically on screen.

Third, to build empathy for audiences who haven’t encountered these questions personally, Tina’s post cancer treatment story and the specific complexities she faces navigating systems not designed for her opens a world largely absent from mainstream reproductive narratives.

Together, these goals serve one outcome: audiences leaving with a richer understanding of how reproductive technology impacts lives.

Chloe’s dual role as filmmaker and participant means she’s not extracting stories from a distance – she’s sharing her own vulnerability too. She fits squarely at the heart of the target audience. She froze her eggs in 2023, giving her direct experience of the physical, emotional, and psychological complexity of fertility preservation.

Dr. Gook has granted us extraordinary access over several years to her laboratory, personal archives, family, and final professional appearances because she wants her granddaughter to understand her work. She speaks to the scientific and medical community and also to older women who had to carve their own paths in life.

Tina and her partner are likewise letting us into their lives as they navigate building the family they want. As LGBTQIA+ people, they provide access and insight in the additional complexities facing queer people in family planning.

This is not a film made about these communities from the outside. We are embedded within them.

This film asks: What do we actually want versus what we think we should want?

We want Dr Gook’s name known – for young women in STEM to see the pathways blazed before them, and that pioneering work comes with costs, but can be worth it.

We want women navigating fertility decisions to feel less alone – their complex feelings validated, their uncertainty seen as human rather than failure.

We want LGBTQIA+ people to see their specific considerations – who carries, whose eggs, navigating systems not built for them – portrayed authentically.

We want to challenge the reductive “career women delaying motherhood” narrative. People freeze eggs for medical necessity, life circumstances, identity, because they haven’t met the right person, or because they’re questioning whether parenthood fits the life they actually want.

Most of all, we want to create space for the questions we’re afraid to ask. Not what we should want. What do we actually want?