Review of Searching for Sugar Man (2012) by Sarfaraz A — 09 Feb 2013

Searching for Sugar Man Swedish/British documentary directed by Malik Bendjelloul. It was produced by Simon Chinn and John Battsek.

ACCOLADES:

The documentary was the opening film at the Sheffield DocFest, the Traverse City Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival - where it won Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award for best international documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. The International Documentary Association (IDA) awarded "Searching for Sugar Man" Best Feature and Best Music at the 28th Annual IDA Documentary Awards at the Directors Guild of America; other accolades include winning of Audience Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Durban International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Melbourne Film Festival, 2nd position Winner of Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival - the Grand Jury Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival - it also won both Audience and Best Music Documentary awards at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam - the documentary was awarded $50,000 at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Searching For Sugar Man is slated for Best Documentary awards both by Academy and Bafta.

Mexican-American Rodriguez Sixto was early-'70s rocker, he was a pop-god in apartheid-era South Africa. It's believed there (South Africa) that he killed himself onstage by shooting himself. But two Cape Town based fans - one owner of record store and other being music-journalist; who embarked upon a journey in mid 90s to see if Rodriguez was actually dead or what happened of him.

Extremely colorful, poetic and literally gloomy in its layout. The documentary touches the inner-most subject of its title. I'm not in row of those people who love musical-documentaries but this seemed to have altered my previous perception about how did I actually see the music-documentaries - provided (if) given insightful and magical story like this. The life of a man who is zero in America but the Hero in South Africa, speaks so much about a man like Rodriguez, who went to swarm of fans in South Africa, long after he was believed dead.

Searching For Sugar Man deserve the Oscar for Best Documentary for upholding the struggle and unswerving spirit of man.