diff --git a/bindep.txt b/bindep.txt
index 0add7231..2c0a940e 100644
--- a/bindep.txt
+++ b/bindep.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,4 @@
 libvirt-dev [platform:dpkg]
 pkg-config [platform:dpkg]
+# fonts-freefont-otf is needed for pdf docs builds with the 'xelatex' engine
+fonts-freefont-otf [doc]
diff --git a/doc/source/conf.py b/doc/source/conf.py
index 3b8b4940..2e7dbec0 100755
--- a/doc/source/conf.py
+++ b/doc/source/conf.py
@@ -65,6 +65,12 @@ html_theme = 'openstackdocs'
 # Output file base name for HTML help builder.
 htmlhelp_basename = 'sushy-toolsdoc'
 
+# The openstackdocstheme 2.1.0 extension stopped always overriding latex_engine
+# to 'xelatex'. We need the 'xelatex' engine in order to handle some Unicode
+# characters we use in our feature classification matrix, like the "X" mark, so
+# we specify it here.
+latex_engine = 'xelatex'
+
 # Grouping the document tree into LaTeX files. List of tuples
 # (source start file, target name, title, author, documentclass
 # [howto/manual]).