2012 film by Malik Bendjelloul
Searching for Sugar Man
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/54/Searching-for-sugar-man--poster.jpg/220px-Searching-for-sugar-man--poster.jpg) US theatrical release poster
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Directed by
| Malik Bendjelloul
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Written by
| Malik Bendjelloul
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Produced by
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Starring
| Sixto Rodriguez
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Cinematography
| Camilla Skagerstrom
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Edited by
| Malik Bendjelloul
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Music by
| Rodriguez
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Production
companies
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Distributed by
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- NonStop Entertainment
(Sweden)
- StudioCanal
(United Kingdom)
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Release dates
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- 19 January 2012
(
2012-01-19
)
(
Sundance
)
- 26 July 2012
(
2012-07-26
)
(United Kingdom)
- 24 August 2012
(
2012-08-24
)
(Sweden)
- 22 February 2013
(
2013-02-22
)
(Finland)
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Running time
| 86 minutes
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Countries
|
- Sweden
- United Kingdom
- Finland
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Language
| English
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Box office
| $9.1 million
[1]
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Searching for Sugar Man
is a 2012
documentary film
about a South African cultural phenomenon, written and directed by
Malik Bendjelloul
, which details the efforts in the late 1990s of two
Cape Town
fans, Stephen "Sugar" Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumoured death of American musician
Sixto Rodriguez
was true and, if not, to discover what had become of him. Rodriguez's music, which had never achieved success in his home country of the United States, had become very popular in South Africa, although little was known about him there.
On 10 February 2013, the film won the
BAFTA Award for Best Documentary
at the
66th British Academy Film Awards
in London
[2]
and two weeks later, it won the
Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
at the
85th Academy Awards
in Hollywood.
[3]
[4]
Production
[
edit
]
While he initially used
Super 8 film
to record some stylised shots for the film, director
Malik Bendjelloul
ran out of money for more film to record the final few shots. After three years of cutting-room work, the main financial backers of the film threatened to withdraw funding to finish it.
[5]
Bendjelloul resorted to filming the remaining stylised shots on his smartphone using an
iPhone
app
called 8mm Vintage Camera.
[6]
Release
[
edit
]
Searching for Sugar Man
was the opening film at the
Sundance Film Festival
in January 2012,
[7]
where it won the Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award for best international documentary. It was released in the United Kingdom on 26 July 2012, and had a limited release (New York and Los Angeles) in the United States the following day.
The film performed well during its theatrical release, earning $3,696,196 at the US box office (81st of all US docs on
Box Office Mojo
).
[8]
Reception
[
edit
]
Critical response
[
edit
]
Searching for Sugar Man
received widespread critical acclaim. On
review aggregator
website
Rotten Tomatoes
, it has a 95% approval rating based on reviews from 133 critics, with an average score of 8.0/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "A fascinating portrait of a forgotten musical pioneer,
Searching for Sugar Man
is by turns informative and mysterious."
[9]
On
Metacritic
, the film has a
weighted average
score of 79 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
[10]
Roger Ebert
of the
Chicago Sun-Times
gave the film a glowing four-star review, writing "I hope you're able to see this film...and yes, it exists because we need for it to."
[11]
The New York Times
critic
Manohla Dargis
also wrote a positive review, calling the film "a hugely appealing documentary about fans, faith and an enigmatic Age of Aquarius musician who burned bright and hopeful before disappearing."
[12]
Dargis subsequently named
Searching for Sugar Man
one of the 10 best films of 2012.
[13]
Criticism
[
edit
]
The film's narrative of a South African story about an American musician omits that Rodriguez was successful in Australia in the 1970s and toured there in 1979 and 1981.
[14]
Because of this omission, some critics have accused it of engaging in "myth-making".
[15]
[16]
However, the film focuses on Rodriguez's mysterious reputation in South Africa and the attempts of music historians there to track him down in the mid-1990s. South Africans were unaware of his Australian success due to the harsh censorship enacted by the
apartheid regime
,
[17]
coupled with
international sanctions
that made any communication with the outside world on the subject of banned artists virtually impossible.
[18]
Awards and nominations
[
edit
]
- Searching for Sugar Man
won the award for
Best Documentary
at the
85th Academy Awards
.
[19]
Rodriguez declined to attend the awards ceremony, as he did not want to overshadow the filmmakers' achievement. Upon accepting the award, producer Simon Chinn remarked on this generosity, saying: "That just about says everything about that man and his story that you want to know."
[20]
Malik Bendjelloul said on stage: "Thanks to one of the greatest singers ever, Rodriguez."
[21]
- The film won the award for
Best Documentary
at the
66th British Academy Film Awards
on 10 February 2013.
- The
Directors Guild of America
awarded the film the
DGA Award
for Best Documentary on 2 February 2013.
- The
Writers Guild of America
awarded the film the
WGA Award
for Best Documentary.
- The
Producers Guild of America
awarded the film the
PGA Award
for Best Documentary.
- The
American Cinema Editors
awarded the film the ACE Eddie Award for Best Documentary.
- The film won the
Guldbagge Award
for Best Documentary at the
48th Guldbagge Awards
.
- The film won the
National Board of Review
award for Best Documentary on 5 December 2012.
- The
International Documentary Association
(IDA) awarded
Searching for Sugar Man
Best Feature and Best Music at the 28th Annual IDA Documentary Awards on 7 December 2012 at the
Directors Guild of America
building, Los Angeles, California.
[22]
- The film won Best Documentary at the
Critics' Choice Awards
.
[23]
- Searching for Sugar Man
won the Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award for Best International Documentary at the
Sundance Film Festival
. It also won audience awards at the
Los Angeles Film Festival
,
[24]
the
Durban International Film Festival
,
[25]
and the
Melbourne Film Festival
, and was 2nd-place winner of the Audience Award at the
Tribeca Film Festival
.
- The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the
Moscow International Film Festival
.
[26]
- At the
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
, held in November 2012,
Searching for Sugar Man
won both the Audience and the Best Music Documentary awards.
[27]
- At the
Doha Tribeca Film Festival
(DTFF),
Searching for Sugar Man
shared the "Best of the Fest" audience award with the Chinese feature film
Full Circle
and was awarded $50,000 (US).
[28]
- The film won Best Film (The Audience Award) at the
Vilnius International Film Festival
.
- The film won Best Film at the In-Edit Festival in Santiago de Chile.
- Searching for Sugar Man
was nominated for five awards at the 6th Annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking, tying with
The Imposter
for the most nominations. Winners were announced on 9 January 2013 at New York City's
Museum of the Moving Image
in Astoria, Queens:
- Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking?Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn
- Production?Simon Chinn
- Graphic Design and Animation?Oskar Gullstrand, Arvid Steen (
won
)
- Debut Feature Film?Malik Bendjelloul
- Audience Choice Prize?Malik Bendjelloul
[29]
- The film was the recipient of the
Australian Film Critics Association
award for Best Documentary of 2012,
[30]
beating the locally-produced musical documentary
All the Way Through Evening
.
[31]
Soundtrack
[
edit
]
The film's soundtrack
is a compilation of songs from Rodriguez's two studio albums, as well as three tracks from his unfinished third album. It reached No. 3 in Sweden in early 2013 when the Academy Award nomination was announced, and had been in the charts for 26 weeks by the time it received the award in February 2013. In Denmark, the soundtrack reached No. 18, and in New Zealand it reached No. 24.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Searching for Sugar Man"
. Box Office Mojo
. Retrieved
14 May
2014
.
- ^
"Full list of Bafta award winners"
,
The Independent
, 10 February 2013: Retrieved 26 February 2013.
- ^
"The 2013 Oscars Best Documentary Award"
, Docomentaryhive.com, 25 February 2013.
Archived
19 June 2013 at the
Wayback Machine
. Retrieved 26 February 2013.
- ^
"The 85th Academy Awards (2013) Nominees and Winners"
.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
. AMPAS
. Retrieved
14 May
2014
.
- ^
Sveriges Radio, Sommar i P1: Florent Chouvet; Summary in English: "You've only got three months"
Retrieved 14 May 2014
- ^
$1.99 iPhone app saved Oscars film
CNN Money
- ^
Vulture.com, 21 January 2012:
Sundance: The Electrifying Search For Sugar Man
. Retrieved 26 February 2013
- ^
"Searching for Sugar Man on Box Office Mojo"
.
Box Office Mojo
. Retrieved
10 August
2023
.
- ^
"Searching for Sugar Man (2012)"
.
Rotten Tomatoes
. Retrieved
16 October
2018
.
- ^
"Searching for Sugar Man Reviews"
.
Metacritic
. Retrieved
16 October
2018
.
- ^
Ebert, Roger (8 August 2012).
"Searching for Sugar Man"
.
Chicago Sun-Times
. Retrieved
19 August
2012
.
- ^
Dargis, Manohla (26 July 2012).
"Searching for Sugar Man"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
19 August
2012
.
- ^
Dargis, Manohla (14 December 2012).
"Against the Odds, Smart Films Thrive at the Box Office"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
14 December
2012
.
- ^
Watt, Andrew (28 February 2013).
"International man of mystery"
.
The Sydney Morning Herald
. Retrieved
3 March
2013
.
- ^
Stewart, Rebecca L.
"Searching For Sugar Man: myth-making at its best?"
.
The Vine
. Retrieved
12 February
2013
.
- ^
Cody, Bill (21 January 2013).
"
'Searching For Sugar Man' ? True Story or the Making of a Myth?"
.
Rope of Silicon
. Retrieved
12 February
2013
.
- ^
Davis, Sue (9 October 2012).
"Music that impacted anti-apartheid struggle"
.
Workers World
. Retrieved
10 June
2013
.
- ^
Rohter, Larry (20 July 2012).
"A Real-Life Fairy Tale, Long in the Making and Set to Old Tunes"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
10 June
2013
.
- ^
McCollum, Brian (10 January 2013).
"Sixto Rodriguez rides the wave of 'Searching for Sugar Man' success"
.
Detroit Free Press
. Retrieved
23 January
2013
.
- ^
Sapa-AFP.
"Sugar Man takes Oscar"
. DailyNews. Reuters
. Retrieved
25 February
2013
.
- ^
Germain, David (25 February 2013).
"Oscars 2013: 'Argo' Takes Home Best Picture at 85th Academy Awards"
.
Moviefone
. Archived from
the original
on 11 April 2013
. Retrieved
25 February
2013
.
- ^
"IDA Documentary Awards 2012 | International Documentary Association"
. Documentary.org. Archived from
the original
on 19 April 2012
. Retrieved
17 January
2013
.
- ^
"Affleck, Argo win big at Critics' Choice Awards"
.
Yahoo! News
. Associated Press. 11 January 2013
. Retrieved
17 January
2013
.
- ^
Gallo, Phil (25 June 2012).
"Rodriguez Doc 'Searching for Sugar Man' Wins Audience Award at L.A. Film Fest"
.
Billboard
. Retrieved
2 August
2012
.
- ^
"Durban International Film Festival: All the winners | Welcome to The Movies"
. Themovies.co.za. 30 July 2012
. Retrieved
2 August
2012
.
- ^
"34th Moscow Int'l Film Festival Award Winners | Filmmaking in Russia"
. Russianfilm.biz. 30 June 2012
. Retrieved
2 August
2012
.
- ^
"Winners of the IDFA 2012 Awards announced"
. Amsterdam, Netherlands:
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
. Archived from
the original
on 29 January 2013
. Retrieved
26 January
2013
.
- ^
"Doha Tribeca Film Festival"
.
Doha Film Institute
. Retrieved
17 January
2013
.
- ^
"The 2013 Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking"
. Cinemaeyehonors.com
. Retrieved
17 January
2013
.
- ^
Krausz, Peter (22 February 2013).
"AFCA Award Winners"
. AFCA
. Retrieved
1 April
2013
.
- ^
"AFCA 2012 Nominees"
. Subculture Media. 22 February 2012
. Retrieved
1 April
2013
.
External links
[
edit
]
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Studio albums
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Compilation albums
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Related articles
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Awards for
Searching for Sugar Man
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1942?1975
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1976?2000
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2001?present
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1948?1989
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2005
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2011?present
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