Sixto Rodriguez is, perhaps, the greatest singer-songwriter that you've never heard of. After releasing two albums as simply "Rodriguez" in the early 1970s that received glowing reviews but no sales, the Mexican American musician retreated home to Detroit and obscurity amid rumors that he committed suicide, only to emerge - unbeknownst to him - as a superstar in apartheid-era South Africa. It's a fantastic story that unfolds almost like a folk tale in Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul's documentary "Searching for Sugar Man."

"I had never even heard of Rodriguez," Bendjelloul says during a recent whistle-stop with the singer in San Francisco, where Rodriguez celebrated his 70th birthday. "The comparison in South Africa is that he was one of the pantheon of rock gods. He was up there with Dylan, the Stones and the Doors.

"I was like, 'Come on! That's ridiculous! The comparison is ridiculous. Of course, he couldn't be that good.' But then I heard him. 'Yeah! This is that good.' "

Rodriguez was a phenomenon that could not have happened anywhere other than a country as completely isolated as South Africa was at the time. When someone smuggled a copy of his debut album, "Cold Fact" (1970), into the country in the early 1970s, his lyrics - reflecting the rebellion of the era and his urban, blue-collar roots - struck a chord with Afrikaners opposed to their government's policies. The government quickly banned the record, which only served to make it and Rodriguez even more popular.

The South Africans' hero, thought dead, remained a mystery for nearly three decades until record-store owner Steve "Sugar" Segerman and journalist Craig Bartholomew turned detective, greeting Rodriguez with the news that he was a rock god once they finally tracked him down.

"It was in piecemeal that I found about it," he recalls. "In 1986, Sugar contacted my daughter Eva and told her about this fan base I had. It was a surprise to me. Sussex went bankrupt, and I thought that was it for me. I went back to work. Then this surfaced. It was exciting news. It was not just a surprise. It was a crazy surprise.

"I toured Australia in 1979 and '81. I was playing small rooms, so to play concerts in the bigger venues in South Africa was - it was epic. It was that level," he adds.

Bendjelloul was on the hunt for stories when he happened on Rodriguez. He had recently quit his job in Swedish television where he specialized in short pieces, most of them seven-minutes long. Embarking on a tour of 16 countries in South America and Africa, he looked for the subject for maybe an hour-long TV documentary. He was not thinking feature film. Then he met Sugar Segerman in Cape Town.

"I was blown away," Bendjelloul says. "This was the best story. Ever! There will never be a better story than this. This is fantastic. This sounds like the best screenwriting. It sounds like fiction.

"There are three separate stories in this film and each one could be enough. There's a detective story of these people who are searching for their dead superstar, and a superstar as famous as Jimi Hendrix. They were searching for, 'Where is Jimi Hendrix? Who is he? Where is he?' Then there was the story of the music. This could be a film, the story of one of the most overlooked albums in the history of music."

'Cinderella story'

"Then there's this third story, which I think is, by far, the most beautiful, the Cinderella story, how from one day to the other, this man's life completely changed and how he has this parallel life that he doesn't know about and he's experiencing it. It's like 'The Truman Show' or something, but it's reality. It sounds like a fiction film. It's too weird to be true."

In a way, Bendjelloul's experience mirrors that of Rodriguez's South African fans. He started working on the documentary before meeting Rodriguez in the flesh. In fact, the musician was the last of the people in "Searching for Sugar Man" that he met. In talking to people like Rodriguez's record producers from back in the day, Bendjelloul began building a legend in his own mind.

"I had heard so many stories about this man that he was almost mythological," he says. "They described him as a drifter or a shadow or a mystery. I was extremely nervous when I was going to meet him. It was almost surreal. Then he came and he was dressed in black and he had the shades and the guitar on his back. He was beautiful.

"He was reluctant," he adds. "This was a man who used to play with his back to the audience. That character was reflected in the way he approached the film as well. He said, 'Malik, you don't need me! You have all the other people! They can talk about me. I'm not that important.' I said, 'Come on! This is your film. It's about you.' But in the end, it was not that much, and I think that makes sense. He's this mysterious person."

"We all have our personal private lives," explains Rodriguez. "I felt he had enough in the film."

The filmmaker who only ever spent four weeks before on a project, spent four years working on "Searching for Sugar Man." He couldn't find investors, so he paid for it himself. He partially shot it in Super 8 and at one point, when he was too broke to shoot on film, he resorted to using a Super 8 app on his iPhone. He came perilously close to having to sell his condo.

Awards and prizes

The payoff came when "Searching for Sugar Man" was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. The film came away from Park City with a distribution deal from Sony Classics and two awards, the audience and special jury prizes for world documentary.

Rodriguez, too, is enjoying a career boost. In the last few years, Light in the Attic Records re-released his first two albums, and Sony Legacy is releasing a soundtrack album. The Bay Area will get a chance to experience him and his music live when he plays San Francisco's swank Bimbo's 365 club in September.

"It's a Hollywood happy ending, and it's not contrived. It just happened this way," says Bendjelloul. "Bringing Rodriguez to the world, it's beautiful to be a part of that." {sbox}

Searching for Sugar Man (PG-13) opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.

To see a trailer, go to

Pam Grady is a freelance writer. E-mail: