The Director's Big Challenge: Not Ruining a Cinderella Story Since being chosen to open the Sundance Film Festival a year ago this month, the documentary "Searching for Sugar Man" has led a charmed life. It has revived the career of Rodriguez, the Detroit singer-songwriter who is the subject of the film, had a successful run in theaters last summer and is now the favorite in the competition for the Academy Award for best documentary feature. Rodriguez had dropped out of sight in 1972, and until the Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul brought his story to the screen, he had largely been forgotten. One exception was in South Africa, where his popularity rivaled that of Elvis Presley or Jimi Hendrix, but even there, the singer was thought to be dead, until a pair of die-hard fans used the Internet to track him down and bring him on tour there. "Searching for Sugar Man," whose title comes from one of Rodriguez's songs, won a special jury prize as well as the audience award at Sundance last year. Since then, it has won awards in its category at other festivals and from groups like the International Documentary Association and, last weekend, the Producers Guild of America. In a pair of interviews, the most recent by telephone from his apartment in Stockholm last week, Mr. Bendjelloul, 35, reflected on his film's improbable ascent. Here are edited excerpts: Why do you think audiences have reacted so strongly to this film? There is something totally unique about this. It's a Cinderella story, it really is. There is something really primal about it. But it's also the fact that he is the way he is and the music is the way it is. It's the resurrection of somebody. There's so much to it. Would it be proper to think of the story of your film as a kind of double fairy tale? Because not only do you tell Rodriguez's unlikely story, but you also had to overcome some pretty substantial obstacles yourself in order to get this film made, didn't you? Yes, it was extraordinarily tough on a personal level, especially for my personal finances. It was pretty grim for quite a few years. Because it was made in my little apartment in Stockholm, with no money whatsoever. It was such a primitive way to make a film. I still consider the film unfinished in a way, because there are a lot of things that I wanted to do that I never had the money to do, because the main funder pulled out when the film was 90 percent finished. So I used all my personal money, and it was a very strange situation. How did you find the story originally? I used to work for Swedish TV, making those biographies with really famous guys like Elton John, Kraftwerk, Bjork and so on. After a while, I thought: "Music is nice, but a song is a song. The really interesting thing is to tell a story. So I quit my job and went traveling to Africa and South America for six months. And your reaction when you first were told about Rodriguez in South Africa? I knew this was pretty much the greatest story I had ever heard. I realized when I retold it to people just how great it was. You can't top this. The challenge is to make a film as good as the story, because I had never made a film before. I knew I should really try to do something, and not spoil it. As complicated as Rodriguez's story is, you tell it at a brisk pace, with the film coming in at under 90 minutes. How did you decide what to leave in and what to take out? At the end, to be honest, I decided that between 80 and 90 minutes, that's enough. It takes so much effort to make even one minute interesting for a movie, and to make 82 interesting is really really hard. To make anything longer, I don't know why anybody does that. The story is 10 out of 10, and I can only make it worse. Voltaire said, the easiest way to bore people is to tell everything. That's what you do for years, editing, leaving things out. To make this film, you had to work in not one, but two cultures that are not your own, as well as a language that is not your own. Was that difficult? I like that. I like seeing new stuff, exploring things. I think you should do that as a filmmaker. It's easier to tell stories from other places in a way, because you see things in a more open way. Rodriguez chose to live very quietly after his music career fizzled, and even in his live performances back then he sang with his back to the audience. So how did he react when you first approached him and told him you wanted to make a movie about him? I think it was something in his body that made it difficult for him to do this. Every time I filmed him, I was, like, "Can you do this to somebody?" He doesn't like it. If someone comes to you and says, "I'm going to make a film about you," you know that it's going to be his version of your life. It's not going to be your version. And that's a threatening thing. And for someone who has always been private, like he is, it's 10 times worse. He really is a person who doesn't like intrusion in his life. In a way, he had to force himself to do this, for the sake of the work. When you got the Oscar nomination, did you call Rodriguez and tell him? What was his reaction? We were actually at the same hotel, and he was two doors down. He was very happy, and we were both very excited. I mean, it's a crazy thing to think of, for someone coming from Sweden, even the word "Oscars" is a fairy tale word. You kind of feel that it's only for other people, that it won't happen to you. Has Rodriguez changed as a result of all this? The demeanor of Rodriguez seems to be something that people find inspiring, and I think they are right. Now he's getting paid, he does gigs and he's touring everywhere. But he doesn't keep the money, he still gives it away to family and friends, I've seen him give $50 tips to every driver. He doesn't change. What about you? What has it been like being part of the Oscar process? I thought it was going to be this kind of mystical world. They told me, "Yes, it's like a presidential campaign, you need to be out there." But I haven't done that. They say, "You need to shake all those hands and talk to all those people." But I don't know who those people are, so I don't know what hands to shake, and I just kind of stand there in the corner. I'm not the kind of guy to go up to another person and start a conversation, so I kind of feel like maybe I'm not the best at using these opportunities.