Davis Guggenheim’s “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” will open the eighth edition of Chicago’s Doc10 documentary film festival on May 4.
About Fox’s life, career and work as a public advocate for Parkinson’s research, “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” debuted at Sundance in January. Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “An Inconvenient Truth” will be at Doc10 to participate in a post-screening conversation.
Doc10, a four-day fest running May 4-7, features a selection of 10 of this year’s most acclaimed documentaries and a package of prestigious doc shorts. Dedicated to supporting social-impact documentary films, the fest is hosted by Chicago Media Project, a company that raises funds for and produces docus including “Crip Camp” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
In addition to “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” Doc10 will screen: Penny Lane’s “Confessions of a Good Samaritan,” Nicole Newnham’s “The Disappearance of the Shere Hite,” Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson’s “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” Alexandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn’s “Going Varsity in Mariachi,” Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s “King Coal,” Lisa Cortés’ “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” Luke Lorentzen’s “A Still Small Voice,” Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s “Subject,” plus Heba Khaled, Talal Derki and Ali Wajeeh’s “Under The Sky of Damascus.”
“Years living under catastrophic global conditions, perhaps it’s not a surprise that this year’s lineup is filled with heroes and trailblazers, from past and present, who offer hope for change, empathy, and paths forward, whether it be through icons like Michael J. Fox, Nikki Giovanni, and Little Richard, or kidney donors and spiritual caregivers,” says Doc10 senior programmer Anthony Kaufman. “Even in our films about the climate crisis or the global struggle for women’s rights, you can see stories that yearn for and advocate for a better future.”
Of the 70 films Doc10 has programmed since the fest’s inception in 2016, a total of 23 have been shortlisted or have been nominated for an Academy Award. Last year five out of the 10 docus selected for the fest (“Fire of Love,” “House Made of Splinters,” “The Janes,” “Navalny,” and “The Territory”) made the Oscar documentary shortlist. “Navalny” was the third Doc10 film to win the Oscar for best documentary feature, following “Summer of Soul” (2022) and “American Factory” (2020).
“This year’s Doc10 is very special as CMP celebrates its 10 year anniversary of supporting impactful documentary film and bringing great storytelling to Chicago audiences,” says CMP and Doc10 founders Steve Cohen and Paula Froehle. “We are so proud of the fact that Doc10 has become one of the primary stops for filmmakers on their way to receiving many awards, often including the Oscar.
The 10 docus selected to participate in this year’s fest made their world premieres at either Sundance, Berlin or South by Southwest in 2023. “Subject” is the only docu that was released in 2022. The film about the ethics of nonfiction filmmaking has not found a U.S. distributor and the doc was not among the 144 docs that qualified for an Oscar last year.
“As Senior Programmer (of Doc10), I reserve the right to show something great or important or overlooked, even if it was not eligible for an Oscar, but still deserved recognition,” says Kaufman.
“Little Richard: I Am Everything” will screen prior to the start of Doc10 on April 13th, due to its theatrical and digital release on April 21.
This year’s festival will be presented at two Chicago venues, the Davis Theater and the Gene Siskel Film Center. All directors are scheduled to attend the festival. (The international team behind “Under The Sky of Damascus” has not yet confirmed attendance.)
More on this year’s slate:
“Confessions of a Good Samaritan”
Director: Penny Lane
Producer: Gabriel Sedgwick
U.S., 105 min.
What does it mean to be a “good” person? And what do we owe to our friends, neighbors, and fellow humans? After a decade of making award-winning and iconoclastic documentaries, such as Our Nixon, Hail Satan? and “Listening to Kenny G,” director Penny Lane turns the camera on herself for this engrossing, humorous, and surprising journey as she sets out to donate her kidney to a stranger.
“The Disappearance of Shere Hite”
Director: Nicole Newnham
Producers: Nicole Newnhan, Molly O’Brien, R.J. Cutler, Elise Pearlstein, Kimberley Ferdinando, Trevor Smith
U.S., 118 min.
“How on earth did I not know about this woman before?” asks Variety critic Jessica Kiang after seeing what she called this “extraordinary,” “revelatory,” and “astonishing” film about the 1970s sex researcher. Author of the bombshell book “The Hite Report,” a groundbreaking investigation into female sexuality, Hite argued (controversially at the time) that most women achieved orgasm through clitoral stimulation rather than intercourse. Though the book remains one of the best-selling of all time, Hite experienced scorn and self-exile. This absorbing chronicle by Oscar-nominated director Nicole Newnham (“Crip Camp”) makes a compelling case for her rediscovery.
“Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project”
Directors: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson
Producers: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, Tommy Oliver
U.S., 102 min.
“The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.” The statement, taken from one of Giovanni’s most famous poems, is both the opening epigraph and the central visual metaphor for this innovative trip with the illustrious and charismatic thinker—whose revolutionary and penetrating words have given voice to decades of Civil Rights and personal struggles. Winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize, “Going to Mars” follows Giovanni, now in her 70s and as blunt and witty as ever, on tour around the country, while also traveling into the past, via riveting archival footage, and into the Afrofuturist outer-space realms of her poetic universe.
“Going Varsity in Mariachi”
Directors: Alexandra Vasquez, Sam Osborn
Producers: James Lawler, Luis A. Miranda, Jr., Julia Pontecorvo
U.S., 105 min.
In the competitive world of high school mariachi, South Texas’s border towns offer the best and the brightest. But who is the best of the best? In this vibrant and affecting underdog story, co-directors Alexandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn track the students of Edinburg North High School as they go for the gold, singing, strumming, and trumpeting their hearts out. While the team has won plenty of trophies in the past under the guidance of dedicated Coach Abel Acuña, this year’s varsity group is a bit shaky, what with new recruits and pandemic-related rustiness. Can they become State mariachi champions?
“King Coal”
Director: Elaine McMillion Sheldon
Producers: Shane Boris, Diane Becker, Peggy Drexler, Elaine McMillion Sheldon
U.S., 78min.
Is the long reign of “king coal”—black gold, toxic fuel—finally waning? In this exquisitely crafted mesmerizing meditation on the mythic power of the precious material, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon excavates her Virginia roots and finds herself and her community at a crossroads. Caught between past and future, myth and reality, loyalty and truth, Sheldon, a coal-miner’s daughter herself, takes viewers on a journey of evocative contradictions, from gorgeous images of verdant Appalachian vistas to glimpses of environmental destruction.
“Little Richard: I Am Everything”
Director: Lisa Cortés
Producers: Lisa Cortés, Robert Friedman, Liz Yale Marsh, Caryn Capotosto
U.S., 98 min.
This sparkling, spirited, and stirring portrait of the “Quasar of Rock ‘n’ Roll” follows the trailblazer’s turbulent and luminous life and musical career. Tracing his early days in Macon, Georgia as the gay son of a minister to his sexually charged 1950s hits “Tutti Frutti” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” and beyond, the film is both a tribute to his galactic cultural influence and a multifaceted story of a Black gay man who would later renounce both rock music and his own queer identity.
“Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie”
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Producers: Davis Guggenheim, Annetta Marion, Jonathan King, Will Cohen
U.S., 95 min.
In this captivating portrait of irrepressible actor Michael J. Fox, the star of “Family Ties” and “Back to the Future” tells his own nearly improbable tale: of an undersized Canadian kid with big dreams who rose to the heights of stardom in 1980s Hollywood—only to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 29. Through intimate and witty conversations, stylish reenactments, and brilliantly edited clips from his memorable career, STILL chronicles Fox’s personal and professional triumphs and travails, revealing what happens when an incurable optimist confronts an incurable disease.
“A Still Small Voice”
Director: Luke Lorentzen
Producers: Kellen Quinn, Luke Lorentzen
U.S., 93 min.
“A Still Small Voice” is suffused with such sensitivity, poignancy, and artistry that it’s already being hailed as one of the best documentaries of the year. Winner of Sundance’s Directing Prize for Luke Lorentzen (“Midnight Family”), the film follows Mati, a chaplain in training during her yearlong residency at a New York hospital. As Mati offers emotional and spiritual support to a range of patients and family members, she’s also wrestling with her past, her faith, and the overwhelming challenges of caring for herself.
“Subject”
Directors: Jennifer Tiexiera, Camilla Hall
Producers: Camilla Hall, Jennifer Tiexiera, Joe Caterini
U.S., 96 min.
For decades, documentaries have spoken truth to power and exposed inequity and injustice–but what about documentaries’ own biases, imbalances, and abuses? Filmmakers Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall go behind the scenes of such famous nonfiction stories as “Hoop Dreams,” “Capturing the Friedmans,” “Minding the Gap,” and “The Staircase” to reveal the murky ethical dilemmas and complex relationships that exist between documentary filmmakers, their real-life participants, and the audiences who watch them. Who gets to tell whose story? What’s it like to be left behind when the cameras stop rolling? And what are the lines between empathy and exploitation?
“Under the Sky of Damascus”
Directors: Heba Khaled, Talal Derki, Ali Wajeeh
Producers: Sigrid Dyekjaer, Talal Derki, Heba Khaled, Beth Earl
Denmark, Germany, USA, Syria, 88 min.
A group of courageous young Syrian women come together to fight back against the pervasive misogyny in their war-ravaged country by staging a theatrical production. In creating one of the first plays written and directed entirely by women in Damascus, they face a series of psychological challenges that will push them, their relationships, and their project to the brink. From Oscar-nominated Syrian exile filmmaker Talal Derki (“Of Fathers and Sons”), working with his wife Heba Khaled and co-director Ali Wajeeh, comes this potent, tense, and masterfully crafted work of nonfiction that exposes the plight of women as they struggle to reclaim their power—both in their own society, and in a shocking narrative twist, the making of the documentary itself.
