Searching for Sugar Man is a documentary film about a South African cultural phenomenon, written and directed by Malik Bendjelloul , which details the efforts in the late s 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.
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. Searching for Sugar Man received widespread critical acclaim. 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 The film's narrative of a South African story about an American musician omits that Rodriguez was successful in Australia in the s and toured there in and 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.
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. In Denmark, the soundtrack reached No. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Malik Bendjelloul Simon Chinn. Release dates. Running time. Production [ edit ]. Release [ edit ]. Reception [ edit ].
