SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN tells the true story of the greatest '70s US rock icon who never was, how he was rediscovered in a far off land and finally became the legend he always deserved to be. It is a story of hope, inspiration and the power of music.
Cast
Production
| Director: | Malik Bendjelloul |
| Producer: | John Battsek (executive producer) |
| George Chignell (co-producer: Passion Pictures) | |
| Simon Chinn (producer) | |
| Nicole Stott (co-producer: Passion Pictures) | |
| Malik Bendjelloul (producer) | |
| Sheryl Crown (executive producer: The Documentary Company) | |
| Malla Grapengiesser (co-producer: Hysteria Film) | |
| Maggie Monteith (executive producer: The Documentary Company) | |
| Hjalmar Palmgren (executive producer: SVT) | |
| Andrew Ruhemann (executive producer: Passion Pictures) | |
| Peter Schildt (consultant producer: Saperi Film Sweden AB) | |
| Writer: | Malik Bendjelloul (written by) |
| Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman (article 'Sugar and the Sugar Man') | |
| Craig Bartholomew Strydom (article 'Looking for Jesus') |
Reviews for Searching for Sugar Man
One Guy's Opinion
A obsession to discover the truth about an obscure singer-songwriter brings surprising and affecting revelations in Mark Bendjelloul’s “Searching for Sugar Man,” a film that would make an excellent double bill with Raymond De Felitta’s “’Tis Autumn...
Christian Science Monitor
The elusive American singer-songwriter named Rodriguez, the subject of Malik Bendjelloul's Sundance favored documentary "Searching for Sugar Man," recorded two cultishly acclaimed albums in the early 1970s that went nowhere, whereupon he left the music...
Read review27 Jul 2012
Slant Magazine
The subject of Searching for Sugar Man is what you might call an easy sell. In the late 1960s, two music producers walked into a smoke-filled dive bar on the docks of Detroit to see Sixto Rodriguez, a singer-songwriter of distinct talent but who...
Read review28 Apr 2012
Seattle Times
"He had this kind of magical quality that poets and artists have," says a Detroit construction worker of his colleague, a hired laborer. That colleague, the subject of the fascinating documentary "Searching for Sugar Man," had a past unknown to his...
Read review23 Aug 2012
stltoday.com
Before the advent of the Internet, shocker movies such as “Psycho” could build ad campaigns around preserving the secret of their endings. But nowadays, even if conscientious critics invoke the term “spoiler alert,” there are social-media knuckleheads...
Read review13 Sep 2012
External Links
| www.sonyclassics.com/searchingforsugarman/ | |
| IMDb.com, Inc.: | www.imdb.com/title/tt2125608/ |
| Rotten Tomatoes: | www.rottentomatoes.com/m/searching_for_sugar_man/ |
| Box Office Mojo: | www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=searchingforsugarman.htm |
| Metacritic: | www.metacritic.com/movie/searching-for-sugar-man |
| Wikipedia: | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searching_for_Sugar_Man |
| ComingSoon.net: | www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=86192 |
| AllMovie.com: | www.allmovie.com/movie/searching-for-sugar-man-v554788 |
| The Numbers: | www.the-numbers.com/movie/Searching-for-Sugar-Man |
| Flixster: | www.flixster.com/movie/searching-for-sugar-man/ |
| Yahoo! Movies: | movies.yahoo.com/movie/searching-for-sugar-man/ |
| Fandango.com: | www.fandango.com/searchingforsugarman_151719/movieoverview |
| Movies.com: | www.movies.com/searching-for-sugar-man/m68635 |
| MSN Movies: | movies.msn.com/movies/movie/searching-for-sugar-man/ |
| Movie Insider: | www.movieinsider.com/m10400/searching-for-sugar-man/ |
Articles
Anyone who comes out of watching the new documentary Searching for Sugar Man will probably have a lot of questions, but the main one on many minds will likely be, "How on earth did I go through life having never heard of Rodriguez?"
ComingSoon.net - 2012-07-25
Reviews for Searching for Sugar Man
One Guy's Opinion
A obsession to discover the truth about an obscure singer-songwriter brings surprising and affecting revelations in Mark Bendjelloul’s “Searching for Sugar Man,” a film that would make an excellent double bill with Raymond De Felitta’s “’Tis Autumn...
Christian Science Monitor
The elusive American singer-songwriter named Rodriguez, the subject of Malik Bendjelloul's Sundance favored documentary "Searching for Sugar Man," recorded two cultishly acclaimed albums in the early 1970s that went nowhere, whereupon he left the music...
Read review27 Jul 2012
Slant Magazine
The subject of Searching for Sugar Man is what you might call an easy sell. In the late 1960s, two music producers walked into a smoke-filled dive bar on the docks of Detroit to see Sixto Rodriguez, a singer-songwriter of distinct talent but who...
Read review28 Apr 2012
Seattle Times
"He had this kind of magical quality that poets and artists have," says a Detroit construction worker of his colleague, a hired laborer. That colleague, the subject of the fascinating documentary "Searching for Sugar Man," had a past unknown to his...
Read review23 Aug 2012
stltoday.com
Before the advent of the Internet, shocker movies such as “Psycho” could build ad campaigns around preserving the secret of their endings. But nowadays, even if conscientious critics invoke the term “spoiler alert,” there are social-media knuckleheads...
Read review13 Sep 2012
Sacramento News & Review
Malik Bendjelloul’s documentary wonders what became of Sixto Rodriguez, the mysterious Mexican-American folk singer who in the 1970s was huge in South Africa, without even knowing it, while unaccountably irrelevant in his hometown of Detroit.
Read review30 Aug 2012
RedEye
Apparently, South African music fans in the ‘90s put little-known early ‘70s folk singer Rodriguez on the same level as those legends. The Detroit-native musician, however, dropped from his label after two albums, had no idea of his fame across the ocean.
Read review9 Aug 2012
Orlando Weekly
The setting is a post-riot, Nixon-era Detroit churning through the early stages of urban erosion, where a thoughtful young folk rocker named Sixto Rodriguez slugs it out playing gigs in flea-bitten dive bars. He manages to land a deal with a...
Read review12 Dec 2012
Screen Jabber
This splendid documentary is about singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez. Never heard of him? Me neither, but he was bloody good. He recorded a couple of albums in the early '70s, but they did no business whatsoever. Shame, as his songs are terrific...
New York Post
Rodriguez was a young folk singer in the Midwest in the late ’60s. There were a lot of them then. But there was something about this guy, his Dylan-esque voice and haunting lyrics, that made local producers sit up and take notice.
Read review26 Jul 2012
The Guardian UK
Two moments from the classic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap will surely occur to you while watching this funny, sad, flawed documentary about a casualty of the 1970s Detroit music scene. The first is when Tap are devastated to hear from a local DJ...
Read review26 Jul 2012
Empire
Music fans will love this indie documentary. Try to avoid Googling him before you watch, though.
doddleNEWS
What happens when a singer/songwriter, living in relative obscurity for over forty years, discovers that he was an overnight sensation, his records having turned platinum … decades ago? In this instance, given the musician’s zen-like acceptance of life...
Read review27 Jul 2012
Channel24
There's nothing particularly new about a great, "lost" 1970s musical artiste being discovered years after the fact, usually earning such hyperbolic praise as "better than Dylan!" or "The Beatles of the '70s!" along the way. Nick Drake, Big Star...
Read review1 Sep 2012
TotalFilm.com
These were the rumours that accompanied the bootlegging of his 1970 album Cold Fact in South Africa, where his records caught the imagination of middle-class liberals.
Read review16 Jul 2012
Flicks.co.nz
Malik Bendjelloul’s doco about a long lost folk singer-songwriter who could have been the next Bob Dylan brings together many of my favourite things - detective fiction, forgotten artists, working class stories, dual existences, music nerdiness - into...
Cast
| Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman | ... | Himself - Record Shop Owner | |
| Dennis Coffey | ... | Himself - Co-Producer, Cold Fact 1970 | |
| Rodriguez | ... | Himself |
| Mike Theodore | ... | Himself - Co-Producer, Cold Fact 1970 | |
| Dan DiMaggio | ... | Himself - Bartender, The Brewery | |
| Jerome Ferretti | ... | Himself - Bricklayer | |
| Steve Rowland | ... | Himself - Producer, Coming from Reality 1971 | |
| Willem Möller | ... | Himself - Musician | |
| Craig Bartholomew Strydom | ... | Himself - Music Journalist | |
| Ilse Assmann | ... | Herself - Former Apartheid Archivist | |
| Steve M. Harris | ... | Himself - Teal Trutone | |
| Robbie Mann | ... | Himself - RPM Records | |
| Clarence Avant | ... | Himself - Former Chairman of Motown Records |
| Eva Rodriguez | ... | Herself - Rodriguez's Eldest Daughter | |
| Regan Rodriguez | ... | Herself - Rodriguez's Youngest Daughter | |
| Sandra Rodriguez-Kennedy | ... | Herself - Rodriguez's Middle Daughter | |
| Rick Emmerson | ... | Himself - Construction Worker Colleague | |
| Rian Malan | ... | Himself - Journalist and Writer | |
 | Malik Bendjelloul | ... | Himself - Interviewer (uncredited) |
Production
| Director: | Malik Bendjelloul |
| Producer: | John Battsek (executive producer) |
| George Chignell (co-producer: Passion Pictures) | |
| Simon Chinn (producer) | |
| Nicole Stott (co-producer: Passion Pictures) | |
| Malik Bendjelloul (producer) | |
| Sheryl Crown (executive producer: The Documentary Company) | |
| Malla Grapengiesser (co-producer: Hysteria Film) | |
| Maggie Monteith (executive producer: The Documentary Company) | |
| Hjalmar Palmgren (executive producer: SVT) | |
| Andrew Ruhemann (executive producer: Passion Pictures) | |
| Peter Schildt (consultant producer: Saperi Film Sweden AB) | |
| Writer: | Malik Bendjelloul (written by) |
| Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman (article 'Sugar and the Sugar Man') | |
| Craig Bartholomew Strydom (article 'Looking for Jesus') | |
| Cinematographer: | Camilla Skagerström (director of photography) |
| Editing: | Malik Bendjelloul |
| Production Management: | Ida Svenonius (digital intermediate and technical supervisor) |
| Fredrik Zander (post-production producer: The Chimney Pot) |
Companies
| Production Studio: | Red Box Films |
| Passion Pictures | |
| Canfield Pictures |
| Sweden | 31 Jan 2013 | |
| United States | 27 Jul 2012 | |
| Czech Republic | 30 Jun 2012 | |
| United Kingdom | 26 Jul 2012 | |
| Ireland | 27 Jul 2012 | |
| France | 26 Dec 2012 | |
| Greece | 23 Sep 2012 | |
| Japan | 16 Mar 2013 | |
| Denmark | 3 Oct 2012 | |
| Australia | 4 Oct 2012 | |
| Germany | 27 Dec 2012 | |
| New Zealand | 11 Oct 2012 | |
| Netherlands | 20 Dec 2012 | |
| Argentina | 19 Nov 2012 | |
| Norway | 25 Dec 2012 | |
| Serbia | 30 Jan 2013 | |
| Poland | 22 Feb 2013 | |
| Spain | 22 Feb 2013 | |
| Finland | 22 Feb 2013 | |
| Hong Kong | 30 May 2013 |
