A recent addition to Chicago’s festival calendar, the Doc10 documentary festival debuted in 2016 and moved to the Davis Theater last year with a mix of accessible, cable-ready titles (Obit., Casting JonBenet) and more challenging work from around the world (The Cinema Travelers, Death in the Terminal). That binary strategy continues this year with, on the one hand, portraits of Elvis Presley (The King), Ruth Bader Ginsberg (RBG), and Fred Rogers (Won’t You Be My Neighbor, already sold out) and, on the other, studies of drug cartel violence (Devil’s Freedom) and the breakup of Yugoslavia (The Other Side of Everything). We’ve reviewed six of the ten features below. The festival runs Thursday through Sunday, April 5 through 8, and tickets are $16; for more information visit doc10.org. —J.R. Jones
On Her Shoulders This documentary profiles human rights activist Nadia Murad, a Yazidi Kurd in Iraq who was forced into slavery by ISIS. Director Alexandria Bombach avoids the details of Murad’s brutal captivity, showing instead the intense pressure and responsibility the 23-year-old feels as a spokesperson for her people. As Murad makes the rounds of Western talk shows and prepares to deliver a three-minute speech to the United Nations Security Council, Bombach emphasizes how, even among politicians and diplomats, Murad’s story is often reduced to a sound bite, and she notes the prurient interest of the media and the public as they ask Murad to recount her trauma over and over. Interviews woven throughout the film give Murad the opportunity to speak freely about the ongoing plight of Yazidi refugees, the questions she wishes journalists would ask her, and the questions she’d like them to stop asking. —Leah Pickett 94 min. Sat 4/7, 4 PM.
Thu 4/5-Sun 4/8. Davis, 4614 N. Lincoln, 773-784-0893, doc10.org, davistheater.com, $16.
