Excellation in … Excel? Within the high commitment, secret world of competitive spreadsheeting Documentary films

SIX years ago, the Melbourne -based filmmaker Kristina Kraskov read an article about an international Microsoft Excel competition and had two thoughts. The first: “What for God’s sake, that can’t be real.” The second: “There must be a movie about this – I want to see it so badly.”

There was no film about competitive spreadsheeting, so Kraskov decided to make it himself. The subject appealed to the director, whose work “records different inner worlds that are a bit unusual on the outside”, including a short film entitled Party At the Back, about a Mullet festival.

Spreadsheet Champions, who will screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival, follows six young competitors from all over the world while they go to Florida for the 2023 Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship To show their skills. It may sound strange, but Excel is an incredibly advanced application, according to the documentary, the average person uses only 10-15% of his possibilities, but competitors should be understood to understand closer to 70% of what it can do.

The competition was built and run by Certiport, a performance -based exam provider, and officially approved by Microsoft. It is a double stroke: the first half test skills in formulas, functions and functions through a series of complex questions, rated on both accuracy and speed. The second part is a more creative application of this knowledge – as Kraskov says, “the story of the data insight into understanding, or the soul of what it actually tells you”.

The championship has been performed since 2002 and is open to students between 13 and 22 years old. Every competitor must first qualify as the best in their home country. For such an esoteric endeavor, the deployment is strange high – the MOS championship sets competitors only once in their lives.

“In most sports competitions you have your most important players who come back every year and your very regular rivalry – but for this competition they can only compete once, so that everyone who comes through can never come back,” says Kraskov.

“They qualify in their home country at very different times around the world, so it really made it a challenge for us – but as soon as everyone qualified in a country where we could go, we would talk to them at Zoom and from there work.”

The six competitors in spreadsheet champions are Alkimini, 20, from Greece; Braydon, 16, from Australia; Carmina, 16, from Guatemala; De la Paix, 19, from Cameroon (who does not have a laptop or WiFi, so had to study at school); Mason, 15, from the US; And took, 21, from Vietnam. Each participant has personality-features that shine in the film of the camera offspring and stereotypical “nerdy” to the charismatic and noisy. “Our intention is really about how great this competition is – we are not here to take a closer look at someone,” says Kraskov.

Kraskov and the producer of the film, Anna Charalambous, spent about a week with every competitor in their home country, observed their daily lives, from home to school and spent time with their families and friends.

“People reveal themselves a lot if you just pay attention to how they live their lives,” says Kraskov. “Teenagers are not yet fully formed adults, so they don’t really connect things about themselves or their personalities – they just live their lives. The parents were so insightful and aware of their children – it gave us a lot of information about how they would potentially thrive or struggle, and who they really were.”

Many of the details of the competition are dressed in confidentiality, which was a different challenge for the filmmakers. The competition is called a man – in a wonderful example of nominative determinism – Bing.

“It is so high -level security,” says Kraskov. “Bing eventually trusted us and gave us questions that would retire … At the end of the day he must deliver a hardcore, safe, world-expert level exam the following year, and our priority is to show the complexity of what it is and what they do.”

Participating in the MOS championship can set up these children for adult life. Carmina, the Guatemalekse competitor, is now 18 and studies Mechatronics engineering at the university. In the film she is shown as a bustling, clear teenager who loves One Direction (she still does that) and excels in, well, Excel.

Looking at the documentary Carmina transported back to the competition and her younger herself – and let her realize what she took from experience. “I already knew the results, but again watch it [I felt] A little tension, “she says.” I tend to doubt a bit of myself and with that experience [of competing] I learned to just go into it and try things out … It helped me a lot. “

Spreadsheet Champions held his world premiere at SXSW in Texas earlier this year and five of the six students will be in Melbourne to attend MIFF. Kraskov is proud to shine a light on them – daily people do something else with their lives.

“Celebrities, musicians and models get a lot of attention,” she says. “But people who devote their lives to things that many people don’t care about – I find that so much fascinating.”