Malik Bendjelloul: 'utterly at home amid the crush of a festival'. Photograph: TT News Agency/Reuters  In the summer of 2012 Malik Bendjelloul rolled in to the Sheffield documentary film festival to tell us that life is strange, that no man is an island and that even the most self-effacing artist can have a galvanising effect on people they've never met on the other side of the world. The Swedish director's documentary, Searching For Sugar Man, opened the event on a glorious high. It spun the story of Sixto Rodriguez, an obscure American folk singer who became an unlikely emblem for the white liberal classes in apartheid-era South Africa.  Rodriguez's new army of fans thought their hero was dead; that he'd set himself alight on stage; the ultimate encore. Instead it turned out that he had taken a job building houses back home in Detroit. Bendjelloul's film was rich and buoyant and perfectly dealt. It reintroduced the singer to the world at large.  Bendjelloul and Rodriguez came as a package and the two men could scarcely have been more different. Having long since made his peace with failure, Rodriguez seemed dazed by the attention and appalled by the process, like a modern-day Kaspar Hauser dragged in front of high society. Bendjelloul, by contrast, was full of puppyish enthusiasm, talking nineteen to the dozen, utterly at home amid the crush of the festival. He was Rodriguez's champion and spokesman. He knew full well that he had made a good film and was delighted to see that the world thought so too.  The sense I had back then was that Bendjelloul was probably the real winner of Searching For Sugar Man. I figured that Rodriguez would play some more concerts, make some well-deserved cash and then gently slip back into the shadows where he had grown comfortable. But for Bendjelloul the story was just beginning. Bright and ambitious, he was set fair for whatever passes for stardom in the world of documentary film-making, so it came as no surprise when he went on to the win the Oscar the following year. But life is strange and the script is a joke. Bedjelloul's sudden death, at the age of 36, is a terrible shock.  After the Sheffield screening of Searching For Sugar Man, the guests gathered for the opening night party at a nearby working-men's club. It was a warm summer evening and there was a barbecue in the backyard. Inside, Sixto Rodriguez lugged his guitar to the stage and ran us through his back catalogue - a collection of lovely, lilting laments from the Watergate era. It was the best opening night party I've ever attended – because it was jubilant, convivial and seemed to cast everyone there as players in Rodriguez's grand, redemptive drama; fellow travellers on the journey. This was all of a piece with inclusive spirit of the film itself, and with the warmth and charm of the director who made it.
Searching for Sugar Man, Bendjelloul's tremendous debut, heralded the arrival of a bright new talent. His death is a terrible shock, says Xan Brooks