When the North South Foundation was founded in the late 1980s, its goal was to raise money among Indian Americans for scholarships to go to underprivileged children back in India. But starting in 1993, when the group was looking for ways to promote education in the U.S. as well, it hit upon holding a spelling bee. “It just took on a life of its own,” Rega said, with the South Asian Spelling Bee joining as an alternative competition in 2008. And seeing Indian American kids excelling on national television (ESPN has been broadcasting the final rounds since 1994) has only amped up the enthusiasm.

Parents in the community have become heavily invested in the competitions, seeking out resources that could help their children succeed and make it to the Scripps stage. But among kids and parents alike, the atmosphere is not as cutthroat as you might think. The North South Foundation’s bee, for instance, is an all-volunteer effort, so the parents all pitch in—as depicted in the film, there’s a great deal of camaraderie and mutual support. “They all want to see each other succeed,” Rega said, adding that they see it as not so much a contest pitting speller against speller, but as an individual sport competing against the dictionary.

That dictionary is the weighty Webster’s Third New International, Unabridged, with nearly half a million words that the students can be quizzed on. Much of the preparation for the Bee involves wrangling this beast of a lexicon, finding the most efficient ways to commit to memory the roots of English word formation. As the four children featured in Breaking the Bee illustrate, each family finds its own way to take on that gargantuan task, and Rega has wisely chosen to spend much of the film’s time in taking viewers behind the scenes to those quiet familial moments.

Shourav Dasari of Houston, Texas, for instance, is shown plowing through an immense spreadsheet of dictionary entries, taking only a second or two to check the pronunciation of each word before typing the spelling with feverish speed. Ashrita Gandhari of North Andover, Massachusetts, takes a more visual approach: We see her mother drawing on a whiteboard and asking Ashrita and her younger sister to identify the classical roots for each part of the human head. (The Latin word for “cheek” is bucca, in case you were wondering.)

Since studying for the Bee is such a family affair, it’s not surprising that younger siblings get hooked on competitive spelling at an early age as they watch their brothers and sisters succeed. Many of the Indian American children who become top competitors have been immersed in this spelling culture from a very early age, thanks in large part to a healthy dose of sibling rivalry.

Sam Rega / Breaking the Bee

Akash Vukoti of San Angelo, Texas, for instance, followed in the footsteps of his sister Amrita, but he quickly transformed into a star in his own right at the tender of age of 6—becoming the first-ever first grader to qualify for the National Spelling Bee in 2016. Akash’s infectious ebullience lights up the screen in Breaking the Bee—he’s quite a ham (previously seen charming Steve Harvey on NBC’s Little Big Shots). Far more cool, calm, and collected is Tejas Muthusamy of Glen Allen, Virginia, who hit upon meditation as a way to stay relaxed in the midst of the scrum of the Bee.