Malik Bendjelloul interview: The Man Who Didn't Know He Was Famous

Before the Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul met Sixto Rodriguez, the subject of his award-winning documentary Searching For Sugar Man, people who knew the musician would tell him one thing: "They said he was such a humble guy. I thought, 'What does that mean? A humble guy?'"

Bendjelloul would soon find out just how accurate this description was of a man who, after his promising musical career had ended almost before it began, had returned with dignity to the quiet anonymity of life as a jobbing construction worker in crumbling Detroit. Initially, however, what it meant was that he had the world's most reluctant interviewee: "He hated those sessions in front of the camera. I was depressed because he was so unwilling."

Interviews would begin with Rodriguez promising Bendjelloul twenty minutes, and then clamming up after five. There were times that the director began to fear that his film would not work. His frustration was exquisite precisely because he was sure that this story of "a man who didn't know he was famous" was a great one.

Rodriguez had made a couple of albums in the early 1970s which, to the astonishment of those around him, had sunk without trace. But his records later turned up in South Africa where they caught the imagination of the liberal white class, and Rodriguez became for them - by way of some enthusiastic bootlegging - "bigger than Elvis." Culturally isolated during the Apartheid years, his South African fans remained as ignorant of the singer's circumstances as he was of his fame there. It was only in the late 1990s that two of their number tracked him down, with astonishing consequences.

Eventually, Bendjelloul managed to coax some halting words from the singer and, even though he remained frustrated with how little material he had - "You always want more" - he later realised "that it was very beautiful. It was part of the story. It was part of the reason he hadn't become famous." Rodriguez's reticence and obvious humility, along with his striking looks - dressed in black, the sharp planes of his face framed by large sunglasses - lend him a compelling screen presence, and helps to make Searching for Sugar Man more than just another rock documentary.

Rodriguez's obscurity also meant that Bendjelloul couldn't take the usual talking-heads-and-archive-footage route favoured by most rockumentaries, for the singer had left few traces in the media. Instead, inspired by James Marsh's Man on Wire, Bendjelloul aimed for a dynamic "retelling" with "every minute having some progression" to "a real climax." The lean and energetic pace of his film bears witness to the many months he spent piecing it together on a laptop in his kitchen.

If interviewing Rodriguez had been difficult, soon Bendjelloul was confronted with a greater challenge; his main backer pulled out, leaving the director with seemingly no option but to give up. But the story had gotten under his skin, and in no small part inspired by the example of Rodriguez's own quiet integrity, he continued to work on the film without any funding, even filming one short scene with a Super-8 app on his iPhone.

In the end, Bendjelloul would spend a biblical-sounding 1000 days on the project. It was a rough cut that he took to Simon Chinn, the producer of Man on Wire, that finally brought money to complete the film. Searching for Sugar Man has since won numerous awards - including Best Doc at Sundance - and, by bringing him into prominence in his native land, has completed the circle of Rodriguez's extraordinary time-capsule career. For Bendjelloul the acclaim from critics and audiences is "everything I ever dreamed of." When I ask if he has plans for his next project, he admits that he is still enjoying promoting this film. His reluctance to move on can be easily understood; like Rodriguez, he knows that success delayed can be all the sweeter.