20 music documentaries you must watch if you liked A Star is Born

Searching For Sugar Man

You may have never heard of the singer Rodriguez, but thanks to this 2012 documentary, he had a resurgence for a bit of an unorthodox reason. Searching for Sugar Man was a documentary by Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul that chronicled two South African fans on the search for the American musician Rodriguez, who was rumored to be dead in the late 1990s.

Sixto Rodriguez (who goes by just Rodriguez) is a singer from Detroit, Michigan, who released two albums in the early 1970s to very little success in the US, which led to him getting dropped from his label. His music, however, garnered a huge following in other places around the world, including Australia and South Africa. Not much was known about him in that country, though, and rumors swirled that he had actually died. In the late 1990s, Stephen Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom from Cape Town, set out to discover what had become of him.

Since he was so wildly popular in South Africa — rumored to have sold as many albums as Elvis over there — his music was also used as protest music for the anti-Apartheid movement. When Segerman and Strydom set out to find out more about him, they discovered he had been living in Woodbridge, Detroit, living a normal life with no telephone and occasionally visiting neighborhood bars.

The unconventional documentary went on to get nominated for and win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and also took home a BAFTA for Best Documentary. It also helped Rodriguez have a bit of a career resurgence.