Searching for Sugar Man
| Searching for Sugar Man | |
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US theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Malik Bendjelloul |
| Produced by | Malik Bendjelloul Simon Chinn |
| Written by | Malik Bendjelloul |
| Starring | Sixto Rodriguez |
| Music by | Sixto Rodriguez |
| Cinematography | Camilla Skagerström |
| Edited by | Malik Bendjelloul |
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Production
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| Distributed by |
Studio Canal (UK) NonStop Entertainment (Sweden) Sony Pictures Classics (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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86 minutes |
| Country | Sweden United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $9.1 million |
Searching for Sugar Man is a 2012 Swedish–British documentary film of a South African cultural phenomenon directed and written by Malik Bendjelloul which details the efforts of two Cape Town fans in the late 1990s, 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 the United States, had become very popular in South Africa although little was known about him in that country.
On 10 February 2013, the film won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary at the 66th British Academy Film Awards in London, and two weeks later it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 85th Academy Awards in Hollywood. Bendjelloul committed suicide a year later.
Initially using Super 8 film to record 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. He resorted to filming the remaining stylised shots on his smartphone using an iPhone app called 8mm Vintage Camera.
Searching for Sugar Man was the opening film at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012, 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.
Searching for Sugar Man performed very well during its theatrical release, earning $3,696,196 at the US box office (47th of all US docs on Box Office Mojo).
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