Searching for Sugar Man (2012)

Though unabashedly manipulative in its storytelling and structure, Searching For Sugar Man ultimately earns its happy ending and buzzy, crowd-pleasing populist appeal by alchemizing trembling inner-city pain into transcendent international beauty.

Music fans will love this indie documentary. Try to avoid Googling him before you watch, though.

The tale is better than the telling – and the soundtrack's better still – but music this monumental demands its moment. Now go and buy the album.

A winning musical detective story about a failed, forgotten early '70s rocker.

Fluid, open-ended documentaries that demand more of an audience than foregone assent or fleeting bouts of passive outrage are rare these days, which is what makes Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man such a gift.