It all started when Balu Natarajan won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 1985 after he spelled the word, milieu. "One newspaper carried a headline that said [and I am paraphrasing], 'Son of immigrant wins Scripps'. A headline like that had never been out before," says Sam Rega, director of Breaking the Bee, a documentary that tries to decode why do so many South Asian Americans win the bee — 19 of the last 23 winners. "What that headline did was that it made all American Indians take notice — and they thought 'if he can do it, so can I'," says Rega.

So, could it be the way Indians see themselves being recognised in America? "Yes! Absolutely. There was a movie made on it, which was nominated for the Academy Award. Later, it started coming on ESPN, which is a channel every one watches. Indians were seeing themselves succeeding, and there was also community and family involved."
New York-based Rega, who has previously made the documentary League of Millions, about a team of professional video game players, follows four Indian-American students, aged 7 to 14, as they compete to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.