For some of us, the sight of an Excel spreadsheet fills us with dread, but for an elite group of competitors, they see the blank cells of one of Microsoft’s core applications as a challenge to be conquered. In director Kristina Kraskov and producer Anna Charalambous’ Spreadsheet Champions, we meet six young people who bravely tackle pivot tables, interconnected sheets, obscure formulas and functions, and more, all in a bid to be crowned the winner of the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championships in Florida, USA.
Spreadsheet Champions takes us head first into he wild and weird world of Excel competitions, introducing us to a global array of subjects: Mason (US), Braydon (Australia), Carmina (Guatemala), Nam (Vietnam), Alkmini (Greece), and De La Paix (Cameroon). Each of these entrants heads to Florida to compete against a room full of equally hopeful champions in the making. Some of them are head hunted at the airport by tech companies looking for the best of the batches of bright new talents, while others are merely looking for a place to take their special hobby to the next level. Each is a character in their own right, and through Kristina’s lens, we’re invited into their lives and given the opportunity to see the world a little differently.
Kristina previously directed the Vice documentary Party in the Back, a short film about a mullet competition in remote Australia. She is also an award-winning photographer. Kristina’s work can be found on her website here. Anna has worked as an associate producer on films like Ellis Park and Australian Open. The two collaborated on the mini-series Suburban Legends.
The following interview sees both Kristina and Anna talk about how they encountered this weird world of spreadsheet competitions, their perspective on global stories, and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length purposes.
Spreadsheet Champions screens at the Melbourne International Film Festival on 22 & 24 August, with additional regional screenings to take place. It also screens at CinefestOz on 31 August, 2 & 5 September 2025.
Where did you first hear about spreadsheet competitions taking place?
Kristina Kraskov: I always love a good story that seems really weird and unusual on the outside. You can learn a lot from this strange world. I came across an article that said this Australian kid is the best in the country at Excel and he's heading off to the World Championships. I was astounded that that headline existed and had so many questions. I read the article, and did a lot of deep diving, thinking I could find a documentary [about it], and there wasn't one. So I sent the article off to Anna, and we got started.
Anna Charalambous: Kristina and I have sort of established ourselves as ‘obscure competition’ esque documentary makers. We've just come off doing one about the international mullet festival in Australia. It was kind of the perfect text to receive from Kristina. I was like ‘Yeah, obviously this is the next thing we should do.’ It has this catchiness up the front, but then kind of it just hits you with so much universality in terms of what that competition means to these young people.
We reached out to this US organisation six years ago, “Hey, this is who we are. We really want to tell this story.” We had to kind of plead with them for six months on Zoom, and thankfully enough, they let us in. From then they have been so open to us and the intention of the story that we wanted to tell. It all came from this article and Kristina's knack for finding unique but universal stories.
KK: It was mainly about imagining the choice to dedicate your life to something like Excel. What does that mean about you as a person? That was what we really wanted to get into.
Anna, as a producer, I imagine you're working in Excel spreadsheets all the time.
AC: What I've slowly uncovered is that the spreadsheet is something that is just embedded everywhere. In my life, I live in a grid. I'm not a ‘spreadsheet champion’ by any means, I definitely could not do what those students are doing, but it does form the base of so many the things that we do in film. So, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, maybe I [might] learn some things on the way as well.’ But then it just kept growing and growing and [we were] understanding what it meant to so many people, to other industries, and how it's the basis of so many things. I do know quite confidently that I am not a spreadsheet champion. I can do a budget and a schedule and that is it.
There's a lot of young people here who are engaged in the spreadsheet competition. Seeing them all losing themselves in the world of spreadsheets at such a young age was fascinating. When you first read that article, did you wonder how these young kids were finding an interest in spreadsheets?
KK: Spreadsheets are a little bit on the out in some circles, yet they sort of remain the building block for so many technologies. What we learned is that to be good at them it's a natural born skill that they also develop. But then to be passionate is another thing in itself and if you have both of those, then that's what makes a good competitor.
I had some weird hobbies and interests in school that weren't really cool, so that was my understanding of them. I wanted to know what it was like to be a teenager at that pivotal time in your life, to be into something that is definitely not cool. A lot of adults will tell you ‘spreadsheets are cool’ and they love them, but there aren’t many teenagers at all [that would say the same thing], and that's what we set out to find out.
You have a wide array of nationalities represented. How do you begin to cast a net to get all these different voices together?
KK: It was one of the biggest challenges because each country has their national competition at a different time in the year. Unlike most sporting events where you have historical data and you've got your key competitors coming back, [here] they can only compete once. So, we had limited windows to find out who won and cast [them]. It was really challenging. We met whoever qualified in their country. Some countries we wouldn't have been able to get into, [so it had to be] countries we could physically get to as well. Then we went off personality, skill set, and also the country's background at the competition. We've got some heavy hitting countries in the film as well as some smaller ones, but I think the cast all represent very different skill sets, strengths, and weaknesses. You can't really compare one to another. They’re all great characters too.
We wanted some heavy hitters. I went to the 2022 comp to shoot a trailer, and I knew that the USA and Vietnam were heavy hitters, so we wanted to include them. But, also to show places that documentaries typically don't take you, places like Cameroon and Guatemala.
AC: Kristina said from the get-go that this is an international film. It will always be an international film. That's part of the brilliance of this competition in that it brings all of these people together just for one week, and then they stay connected. They [might] go back to their own countries as champions. We were really conscious of getting a spread, but also a unique spread, so not necessarily going to the biggest country on each continent, because that wasn't as interesting for us.
Cameroon was one of those countries; Kenya and Ethiopia also compete in this competition, but Cameroon was special because it's smaller and we got quite an intimate look into kind of what education is there and what this competition means for young De La Paix, who flew to Orlando for the first time in his life. He's actually going back this year to compete.
You're on the ground capturing their stories. You get invited into their schools and meet their families too. What does that mean to be able to bring those intimate stories to life on screen?
KK: Truly, it was the best experience. I've been lucky to travel a lot, but it's not the same as hanging out with the family every day, going to school with someone and just getting all access into someone's life from a very different world to the one that we're from. I'm just incredibly grateful. We said regardless of the outcome that we were so glad that we had that opportunity [to film their stories]. It was exhausting and crazy every day. When we weren't shooting, we were flying. It was a new time zone, and it never stopped. The stories and the people were so good, it k powered us through that whole time to be able to make it to the end.
Kristina, you mention being into ‘weird things’ as a kid. I was into some weird things as a kid, and I can imagine that getting to see something like this on screen would make it feel safe, right?
KK: That is what I wanted it to be, if it might not be Excel, but I wanted people to walk away from it being more open to other people's passions and things that are underrepresented. It's weird, because Excel might be nerdy or dorky, but at the same time, how many people use it? A billion.
AC: There's a billion people that use just Excel, let alone spreadsheets and all that.
KK: It's not exactly a subculture, but in a way, it is.
AC: That was why we kept going. We were developing it before 2020, and we all know what happened. We kept going with it when [the competition] came back. We're at such an interesting time where the world is shifting to. The data skills, technology skills, and mathematical and logical skills that Excel presents are the future. It's a world for the nerds, in terms of we're going to use technical applications like that. These are the kids of the future, without a doubt. I know Kristina and I will be calling Mason or Carmina, or any of them, ‘Hey, so you’re the head of NASA now, but you know, can you help us?’ It's indicative of the time that we're in as well.
KK: Society has shifted with technology a lot. Things that were seen as uncool are now the most important things or they get you quite far now. It's interesting that whilst Mason is kind of who you expect, you've got Braydon and Carmina in there, and they're really not who you would think of as an ‘Excel athlete’, but there they are. We went to school with Carmina, and she was popular and cool and had all these friends, and we weren't prepared for that to actually happen, so it was a bit of a shock.
I love spending time with her, especially with her love for One Direction. I read one of the Letterboxd reviews where somebody said ‘I hope that she's okay’, because this would have been filmed before Liam had passed away.
AC: We have checked in and she is okay. She was very sad at the time. She's a Niall Horan stan.
The thing is the time that we spend with them, all we want to know is that they're going okay, that they're having a good life, and continuing to do what they love. Getting to hear that others are going back to compete in other competitions in the tournament, like De La Paix, is wonderful. The other thing I found fascinating was that it's not just Excel. It's Adobe. It's Word. It's PowerPoint. When you scratch the surface, suddenly this whole world opens up with of all these different kinds of competitions. Was that a surprise?
KK: I found out pretty quickly that it was the whole Office suite. A lot of the stories presented themselves very naturally. The Excel competition stood out and presented itself as being difficult, prestigious, the [competitors are the] next level. The more we talked to people and asked about it, they were like, ‘oh, Excel is another level.’ Excel stood out on its own and made it easy for us to choose what to follow in that regard. But it's very nice to see that there's something for everyone with Word and PowerPoint. A lot of Excel competitors don't love Word or PowerPoint, but then go back to compete again, just to have that chance at glory.
AC: This world has now opened up a lot. There are so there are competitions about everything these days, which I think is awesome. Kristina mentioned before, this film became a love letter to passion and the importance of just going for it. Whatever it is, be it Excel, One Direction, soccer, or ham radio, just go for it. The world is so much brighter when people are totally who they are and feel comfortable being that. These students an example of that.
Is the area of quirky offshoot competitions like this or the mullet competition the kind of thing that you want to explore on screen for the time being?
KK: There are so many great stories and they are such a good vehicle for learning more about humanity. They have a lovely built-in structure that really works as well. Someone did say to me, ‘you can't just be the weird competition girl.’ But if there are so many, why not?
AC: Who else is going to make them?
KK: There are more competitions I'm interested in. But at the same time, I think if it's a story about people who are doing what they love or showing us a new world, and through them, we can learn things, then that's the story that I'll go for.
You're not just ‘the weird competition documentary girl’, you're a photographer as well. A phenomenal one at that. These are two creative endeavours you’re working with. When you see the world in one way for documentaries, and then you're seeing it, and another for your photography. How do you balance the two?
KK: To be honest, often I don't. Some years I'll have a really good photography year and get a lot of stuff happening, and then I'll be busy with film and TV work. They're very similar to me. You might have seen the National Photographic Portrait Prize portrait (I’m Just a Suburban Fashionista). I won the Peoples Choice Award for that. I made a short documentary on her, and something went wrong with it, but I took the photo because I saw the lighting at the right time. It's just about being open to people and their stories. Whether they're represented through a single shot or 86 minutes, that depends. To me, they're very similar.
That's beautiful to say about being open to people's stories, because so often we can be closed off. Through a film like Spreadsheet Champions, we're invited to be open to other people's stories and other people's worlds. What does being open to people's stories mean to you both?
AC: It's a thing you learn to keep growing with. I feel like so lucky daily that this is sort of the job that I get to do, because it kind of opens up your world, personally, to understanding different perspectives and being able to slip into somebody else's life and see everything as well as close as you can, it's never going to be fully. I think of being shown Cameroon through De La Paix and his life. It just gives you such a more contextualised understanding of the world.
I'm learning, but I do feel like I'm able to sort of shift into other people's perspectives, or just outside of myself, I guess. You really have to try to put yourself aside when you're making films and documentaries. Even with this film, we were so close to it for so long that by the end, we had to learn, ‘okay, who do we want this film to be for? How do we want them to feel when they see it?’ We always came back to that. Even through moments of the test and the victories and the highs and lows, it was that you’ve got to try get out of yourself to think about who you want to make this film for, who will receive it, and then kind of try and learn from that. It's a skill that you need for what we do.
I feel grateful all the time for what we get to do because you get to be part of a world that's so much bigger than yourself, and when there's so much beauty in it, and it's so big, I’m just so lucky to be able to do that.
KK: For every talking head that you see in the film, we sat there for hours and asked a lot more [of others] that didn't make the cut. When you primarily are just sitting down with people in an [interview] situation, they open up their lives to you and give you all of their life lessons that they've learned. Even just working in TV or on other productions, if you're constantly interviewing people and asking questions, you get the immense privilege that is everyone's best life lessons and stories. I think adding that to yourself as a person is an amazing thing to do. [It also] comes with a lot of responsibility at the same time, but I think it's the best part of what we do, and it does make us more open people, in a way.
What does it mean to be an Australian filmmaker working today and telling global stories from Australian perspective?
KK: I think the reason Anna and I connected in the first place is we both come from immigrant families, and so we had this unique version of growing up in Australia where you are sort of half in the culture and half not, growing up and rejecting that and then actually accepting it and finding out what that means. We thought that would prepare us going into this global film, but don’t I think anything could have really prepared us for it.
To be an Australian storyteller, I think we are just that that bit more relaxed, [we have] that casual, fun openness which can get us far. We're asking a lot of mega corporations and very important people things, and I think people just like Australian humour, and it can get you a little bit further in the door, if you just ask the question and you're happy about it.
AC: It's quite a heavy question, and there’s a lot of responsibility to answer. I think you’re bang on Kristina in terms of who we are as people. For me personally, I always feel like I kind of half belong somewhere else, wherever that is, because my dad is from Cyprus. My mum is from Greece, and I'm in Australia. So I always am like Australian, but Greek, very Greek. Then I go to Greece, but I'm Australian, so you always have that question of where do you even fit in? You always question things. I don't know if that's an Australian thing, but obviously we are such a multicultural place and space. That element of this country is what I like. I'm so proud to be a part of it.
I love to travel overseas. I love the international perspective and lens, and I think that that's why Spreadsheet’s as our first big film is extraordinary, and something that I still can’t believe we've done it. That’s what makes Australia so special, in that we just have access to so many perspectives and so many experiences.
I do think our accents help us a lot, and definitely when we were calling Microsoft, I was like, ‘hey, so I'm Australian, please help me.’ And it kind of helped us fly under the radar, like they didn't even realise they were saying yes.
We live in a really unique and special place of the world, and that's because there's just so many different perspectives and cultures coexisting. I'm forever grateful just for the even the group of friends that I have, and the experiences of my parents and Kristina's family and parents. It's such a special place where that happens, and I don't feel it happens that much in other parts of the world.
Part of the reason why I ask this question is because I get these beautiful answers with a distinctly Australian perspective on things. We are such a vast multicultural place. The diaspora that's in Melbourne is very different than what's in Perth or Sydney, right? It’s also how we, as storytellers, engage with the world. Anna, you're talking about when you're in Greece, you're Australian, but when you're in Australia, you're Greek. How do you balance those? It's really complicated and it is heavy, but it's also something that we don't consciously think of enough, and that's why I tend to ask it, because it's a good reminder that we are in a unique place and have unique stories to tell from unique perspectives.
KK: What I love about being an Australian filmmaker is there's so many weird stories. There's a lot of material. I think the challenge now is getting those out to the world and proving to the world that they are really good stories. There's a lot of interesting characters here that you need to meet.
AC: I feel like there was such a relevance in Spreadsheet Champions to make it about the coming together of all these cultures and that it takes place at an international competition. But maybe that is just because it is who we are as people, and what we've learned and grown up with here that we just like, ‘whoa. Look how cool it is that all of these people come together. All these cultures, experiences and all that come together for one week and then go away.’ Maybe that is impacted by the fact that we are Australian, because I think that's what is exciting to me, is seeing the coming together of people.