26/02/2013 - Besides winning the Academy Award for Searching for Sugar Man as Best Documentary, two Swedish sound engineers shared the prize for Best Sound Editing

The Swedish Oscar camp in LA was partying, and all flags were hoisted at Stockholm’s Film House, which served free cake to visitors after the 85^th Academy Awards Ceremony, where three Swedes left with statuettes: Swedish director Malik Bendjalloul, whose Searching for Sugar Man [+see also:
trailer
film profile] was named Best Documentary, and Swedish sound engineers Paul NJ Ottosson and Per Hallberg, who shared the prize for Best Sound Editing.

Bendjalloul and UK producer Simon Chinn, who previously picked up an Oscar for UK director James Marsh’s Man on Wire [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2008), should have been joined on the red carpet by 70-year-old Detroit singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez, whose fate they explore in the film – but he had just returned from a tour in South Africa, and the 26-hour flight home was enough for the week.

“After this I will go on holiday in the world and look for a story which is as good as Rodriguez’s,” said Bendjalloul, who - after Searching for Sugar Man was launched at the Sundance Film Festival (where it won two prizes) - entered the international festival circuit to collect more than 20 awards, including Sweden’s national film prize, the Guldbagge, for Best Documentary.

Ottosson received the honour at the Dolby Theater for his work on US director Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks, while Hallberg was awarded for his and Karen Baker Landers’ efforts on UK director Sam Mendes’ Skyfall [+see also:
film review
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making of
film profile], the latest instalment in the Agent 007-James Bond franchise.

Sweden had a minor share in Danish director Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror,which was awarded for Best Foreign-Language Feature in 1989 – but the latest ‘pure’ Swedish win was in 1984, when Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander landed four trophies: Bergman/producer Jörn Donner for Best Foreign-Language Feature, Sven Nykvist (Best Cinematography), Anna Asp-Susanne Lingheim (Best Art Direction-Set Decoration) and Marik Vos-Lundh (Best Costume Design).