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Not every child spends their time filming their own family in the style of David Attenborough. Kristina Kraskov was different. Growing up, she always had a camera in hand, drawn to “weird and wonderful things … Places I could belong,” she says.
The Melbourne filmmaker and photographer has channelled this tender curiosity for the “strange” into documentaries about prize-winning mullets, a Melbourne woman known for walking around the city with a water bottle on her head, and more recently a global competition in making spreadsheets.
“This is one of those instances where the story of the film very much presented itself to me naturally,” says Kraskov, who first came across an article about the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championships more than six years ago.
It piqued her interest. Who are these adolescents who devote their lives to formulas and data sets?
“In asking more questions about how the competition worked, people would just tell me that Excel was different. It was a different level. It was the elite of the elite,” she says.
Her 2025 documentary, Spreadsheet Champions, follows six young international competitors at the 2023 event. Competitors (aged 13 to 22) travel for their chance at international glory and prize money as champions in Word, PowerPoint and Excel. It was the Excel heroes that especially compelled Kraskov.
“[People told me] they were more strange than any of the other competitors, and that just made my ears prick up,” she says. “It’s so numbers-heavy and so precise. You know, one wrong stroke on the keyboard can ruin your formula.”
The high stakes are clear, as we see the young competitors devote hours of study in front of computers, knowing they can only compete once in their lifetime under the competition’s strict rules.
There’s a lot on the line for these kids. Cameroon’s Yvan De La Paix doesn’t own a laptop, so practises at school. Greece’s Alkmini Gaitantzi has never been on a plane. American Mason Braithwaite is so anxious he doesn’t have breakfast the morning of the exam.
Perhaps the most chill competitor is, hilariously, Australia’s Braydon Tanti, who admits he “winged it” in nationals. All six know that past winners have secured study scholarships or were even stopped at the airport with their comically jumbo-sized cheques with offers of jobs.
“In that [competition] room, you can just feel the anxiety in the air,” Kraskov says. “All you could hear was keyboards quietly typing and breathing, and there’s just so much tension and the clock is ticking down.”
This tension mirrors Kraskov’s own journey in making the documentary. At the time of the championships, she and producer Anna Charalambous self-funded the filming. This involved several days in Florida during the championships, as well as week-long stays with competitors and their families in their home countries.
“It was a huge risk that we didn’t know would pay off,” says Kraskov. “I had to be so sure that everything I was getting was good. And as soon as we started, [it was clear] these people were so amazing.”
On the road filming Vietnam’s champion, Nam, they didn’t yet know who had qualified from every country.
“We had reached out [to the US] to see who was likely, and Mason had told us he [was very into] ham radio,” says Kraskov. “I was just hoping and praying that it was the ham radio kid. We watched the live stream [in Vietnam] and he won. We were so excited.”
Kraskov says every family was welcoming, and once they got to know each other, filming during the competition became easier. The best part? No “stage parents”.
“All the parents and family members were firm, but fair and kind, and they understood that this was their child’s passion,” says Kraskov. “What struck me was what you can achieve if you put time into what you are naturally interested in and good at.”
Much of this support, she says, comes not only from family members but from school.
“Teachers are really the unsung heroes who can change someone’s life, who can spot them and nurture those abilities. I had teachers like that too. My art and media teachers encouraged me to do photography. I made some short films that aren’t very good, but they could see there was something there.”
‘I was never going to make fun of them ... It’s very much a celebration of the different and the unique.’
Kristina Kraskov, Spreadsheet Champions directorKraskov, who studied documentary ethics for her master’s, ultimately sees Spreadsheet Champions as a celebration of nerd culture.
“When I was in school, [being a] nerd wasn’t a good thing. Which is so ridiculous because people with these skills are running the world now.
“I was never going to make fun of them ... It’s very much a celebration of the different and the unique.”
The documentary screened at Melbourne International Film Festival, SXSW and Canada’s Hot Docs Festival in 2025. Kraskov couldn’t attend the MIFF screening (she was in hospital, about to give birth), but vividly recalls the nerves in the Texas and Toronto theatres.
“We did put a bit of Australian humour in the way that we cut it, and that doesn’t always translate,” she says. “Will they understand the jokes? And so hearing the laughs and the gasps and the cries and people telling you that they were stressed watching it, that’s what you want.”
For many of the adolescents featured, normal life carried on after the documentary screened – with some perks.
“Mason got to come to SXSW, then he went to a couple of other screenings in the US too,” says Kraskov. “I think that was pretty exciting for him. He did a lot of Q&As, and people just love him.
“There are so many negative stereotypes about teenagers and young people, especially now, and I just hope people are a bit more open to what youth can do. Look at these six! They’re going to do amazing things.”
Spreadsheet Champions streams on DocPlay from February 5.
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