While the Swedish Film Institute will reveal the winners of its Guldbaggar – Sweden’s national film prizes – tonight (January 21), the Göteborg International Film Festival has already decided where to place its main award: with Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul’s documentary Searching for Sugar Man [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

 

Bendjelloul will receive Göteborg’s Big Film Prize (€5,800) at the festival opening on January 25. The decision was made by local audiences after screenings of three Guldbagge favourites for Best Film, also including Mikael Marcimain’s Call Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (11 nominations) and Gabriela Pichler’s Eat Sleep Die [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: China Ahlander
interview: Gabriela Pichler
interview: Nermina Lukac
film profile] (5 nominations). Bendjelloul’s first full-length documentary is considered in seven categories.

 

The first Swedish documentary nominated for an Oscar (adding a British BAFTA Award), Searching for Suger Man has collected more than 20 international prizes since it was launched at last year’s Sundance Film Festival to win the Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award, and immediately was picked up for the US, Australia and France. Most recently (January 10) it was named Best Documentary at the American Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards.

 

Produced by Peter Schildt, Simon Chinn and Bendjelloul for Red Box Films and Passion Pictures, the film follows a South African journalist and a fan of the late Detroit singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez, who  decide to find what really happened to Rodrigues. Allegedly he committed suicide after his career had bombed in the US – but in South Africa he became a pop music icon and an inspiration for generations, selling more records than The Rolling Stones.