{"id":111808,"date":"2025-08-02T02:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T02:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/111808\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T02:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T02:11:09","slug":"excelling-in-excel-inside-the-high-stakes-secretive-world-of-competitive-spreadsheeting-documentary-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/111808\/","title":{"rendered":"Excelling in \u2026 Excel? Inside the high-stakes, secretive world of competitive spreadsheeting | Documentary films"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six years ago, Melbourne-based film-maker Kristina Kraskov read an article about an international Microsoft<\/a> Excel competition and had two thoughts. The first: \u201cWhat the hell, that can\u2019t be real.\u201d The second: \u201cThere\u2019s got to be a film about this \u2013 I want to watch it so badly.\u201d<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t a film about competitive spreadsheeting, so Kraskov decided to make it herself. The subject appealed to the director, whose work captures \u201cdifferent inner worlds that are a bit unusual on the outside\u201d, including a short film titled Party in the Back, about a mullet festival.<\/p>\n

Spreadsheet Champions, which will screen at the Melbourne international film festival, follows six young competitors from around the world as they head to Florida for the 2023 Microsoft Office Specialist world championship<\/a> to showcase their skills. It might sound silly, but Excel is an incredibly sophisticated application \u2013 according to the documentary, the average person uses only 10-15% of its capabilities, but would-be competitors are required to understand closer to 70% of what it can do.<\/p>\n

The competition is built and run by Certiport, a performance-based examination provider, and officially endorsed by Microsoft. It\u2019s a two-parter: the first half tests proficiency in formulas, functions and features through a series of complex questions, graded on both accuracy and speed. The second section is a more creative application of this knowledge \u2013 as Kraskov puts it, \u201cunderstanding the story of the data, or the soul of what it is actually telling you\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018It helped me a lot\u2019 \u2026 Carmina, the teenage competitor from Guatemala, in Spreadsheet Champions. Photograph: Supplied by Melbourne international film festival<\/p>\n

The championship has run since 2002 and is open to students between the ages of 13 and 22. Each competitor first has to qualify as the best in their home country. For such an esoteric endeavour, the stakes are oddly high \u2013 the MOS championship only allows competitors to enter once in their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn most sporting competitions, you have your main players that come back every year and your very set rivalries \u2013 but for this competition, they can only compete once, so everyone that\u2019s coming through can never come back,\u201d Kraskov says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey qualify in their home countries at vastly different times around the world, so it made it really challenging for us \u2013 but as soon as anyone qualified in a country that we could go to, we would talk to them on Zoom, and work our way down from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 doesn\u2019t have a laptop or wifi, so had to study at school); Mason, 15, from the US; and Nam, 21, from Vietnam. Each contestant has personality quirks which shine through in the film \u2013 from the camera-shy and stereotypically \u201cnerdy\u201d to the charismatic and boisterous. \u201cOur intention is really about how amazing this competition is \u2013 we\u2019re not here to make fun of or disparage anyone,\u201d Kraskov says.<\/p>\n

De La Paix, right, from Cameroon, doesn\u2019t have a laptop or wifi, so had to prepare for the competition at school. Photograph: Supplied by Melbourne international film festival<\/p>\n

Kraskov and the film\u2019s producer, Anna Charalambous, spent about a week with each competitor in their home country, observing their day-to-day lives, from home to school, and spending time with their family and friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople reveal themselves a lot if you just pay attention to how they live their lives,\u201d Kraskov says. \u201cTeenagers are not quite fully formed adults yet, so they don\u2019t really connect things about themselves or their personalities \u2013 they just live their lives. The parents were so insightful and knowledgable about their kids \u2013 it gave us a lot of information about how they would potentially thrive or struggle, and who they really were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the contest\u2019s specifics are shrouded in secrecy, which posed another challenge for the film-makers. The competition is overseen by a man named \u2013 in a wonderful example of nominative determinism \u2013 Bing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so high-level security,\u201d Kraskov says. \u201cBing eventually trusted us and gave us questions that would be retired \u2026 At the end of the day, he has to deliver a hardcore, secure, world-expert level exam the next year, and our priority is to show the complexity of what it is and what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Participating in the MOS Championship can set these kids up for adult life. Carmina, the Guatemalan competitor, is now 18 and studying mechatronics engineering at university. In the film, she is shown as a bubbly, bright teenager who loves One Direction (she still does) and excels at, well, Excel.<\/p>\n

Watching the documentary transported Carmina back to the competition and her younger self \u2013 and made her realise what she took from the experience. \u201cI knew the results already, but watching it again [I felt] a little bit of suspense,\u201d she says. \u201cI tend to doubt a little bit of myself and with that experience [of competing] I learned to just go into it and try things out \u2026 It helped me a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spreadsheet Champions had its 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 \u2013 everyday people doing something a little different with their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cCelebrities, musicians and models get plenty of attention,\u201d she says. \u201cBut people that dedicate their lives to things that a lot of people don\u2019t care about \u2013 I find that so much more fascinating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six years ago, Melbourne-based film-maker Kristina Kraskov read an article about an international Microsoft Excel competition and had…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":111809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,53,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-111808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114956749007305458","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}