Searching for Sugar Man

Production

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.

Release

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).

Critical response

Searching for Sugar Man has received widespread critical acclaim. The film holds a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8/10, based on reviews from 120 critics.

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." 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." Critic Dargis subsequently named Searching for Sugar Man one of the 10 best films of 2012.

Criticism

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. Because of this omission some critics have called the documentary "myth-making". However, the film focuses on his 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 coupled with international sanctions that made any communication with the outside world on the subject of banned artists virtually impossible.

Awards and nominations

The film was also the recipient of the Australian Film Critics Association award for Best Documentary of 2012, beating locally produced musical documentary All the Way Through Evening.

Soundtrack

Searching for Sugar Man is a 2012 soundtrack album from the documentary containing a compilation of songs by Rodriguez from his two studio albums. 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 it reached No. 18 and in New Zealand it reached No. 24.