Spelling the Dream

"Competitions of spelling have become a kind of institution in the United States. Annually, hundreds of children try to decipher and spell words correctly in order to reach the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the most prestigious in the country. And despite the unpredictability of this type of competition, a pattern has been repeated: between 2008 and 2019, only children of Indian descent have won the contest. In one of the years, there were even eight champions at once. Seven were from Indian families. Now, the documentary 'Breaking the Bee' seeks to understand and analyze the predominance of Indians in this type of competition to show that this may have much more interesting and profound social roots. It is also interesting to note how director Sam Rega knows how to manage the atmosphere of the spelling competition and increase it in the narrative of the film."