LOS ANGELES. The Swedish film “Searching for Sugarman” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2012.
Today, Malik Bendjelloul's film is once again being praised in the United States.
The American trade magazine Variety and its sister magazine Rolling Stone rank “Searching for Sugarman” second among the ten best documentaries of the last ten years.
Director Malik Bendjelloul is behind “Searching for Sugar Man”.
Photo: ANDERS WIKLUND / TT / TT PRESS AGENCY
The documentary now ranks as the second best of the decade.
Photo: UNKNOWN
The documentary tells the unlikely story of songwriter Sixto Rodriguez.
Photo: HAL WILSON/AP COURTESY OF SONY CLASSIC PICTURES
The documentary won an Oscar in 2013.
Photo: CHRIS PIZZELLO / AP INVISION
In its special edition Truth Seekers (“Sanningssökarna”), the newspaper describes the Swedish film as “a moving story about the revelation of the mystery surrounding the singer and songwriter Sixto Rodriguez, who fell into oblivion in his native country, the United States , at the same time as he had become a cult star in South Africa.”
With the help of some of Rodriguez's fans in Cape Town, South Africa, Bendjelloul and his team tracked Rodriguez down to Michigan, where he was living as a manual laborer, and helped him make a comeback in the world of music.
After a lengthy legal process, Rodriguez, now 80, also received previously withheld royalties this summer from records sold over the years.
Second best in the last ten years
Variety only rates one documentary in the last ten years as more watchable than “Searching for Sugarman” and that is 2015's “The Jinx: The life and deaths of Robert Durst.”
The television documentary about real estate tycoon Robert Durst, in which he was found guilty of several high-profile murders in the United States for which he was previously suspected, has left behind shockwaves.
Other notable films on Variety and Rolling Stone's list are 2016's “OJ: Made in America” and “American Factory” (2019), produced by former presidential couple Barack and Michelle Obama.
Malik Bendjelloul was present in Los Angeles in February 2013 when he received the Oscar statuette for his “Searching for Sugarman”.
He died at the age of 36 in May 2014.
Malik Bendjelloul's film also received a Guldbagge and around twenty other awards at film festivals around the world.
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