Four stars. Rated PG, for no particularly reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.17.20
Think 2002’s Spellbound, but with STEM whiz kids rather than spelling bee champs.
Writer/directors Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster’s warm-hearted documentary — debuting on Disney+ — profiles nine high school students from around the globe, as they compete for top honors at the annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).
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| Despite being constrained by very limited resources, Gabriel and Myllena nonetheless made a major medical breakthrough that could help combat the Zika virus. |
The young contestants are a varied group, although united in passion, persistence and — let it be said — jaw-dropping intelligence and ingenuity. Following the Spellbound template, we meet each in turn, and I advise against picking an early favorite; each new candidate is likely to win a place in your heart.
The film actually opens with a previous year’s winner, Jack Andraka, who — as a high school freshman — took the grand prize for inventing a method to possibly detect the early stages of pancreatic and other cancers. His joyous rush to the stage is wholly out of control, his elation absolutely off the chart; we can’t help but laugh.
At a later (calmer) moment, the filmmakers get Jack to briefly explain what we’re about to see, and what it means to young students who are too frequently — and often contemptuously — dismissed as geeks by their peers.
Indeed, a few contenders are total outsiders. Kashfia, impeccably polite and soft-spoken, is a Muslim girl at a massive, sports-obsessed high school in Brookings, S.D. The hallways are lined with display cases: laden with sports trophies, with nary an academic honor to be seen. Worse yet, she’s unable to find a teacher willing to serve as her research advisor, so — and you have to love this — she bonds with the school’s head football coach.
Ivo, a similarly soft-spoken German aeronautical engineering student, has re-designed a century-old, single-wing aircraft that was deemed impractical and abandoned. The young man’s outside-the-box enhancements improved stability and efficiency to a degree that impressed judges at the German National Fair, which in turn qualified him for ISEF, and his first trip to the United States.
West Virginia’s Robbie is an awkward, hopelessly shy misfit with a fondness for flamboyant shirts. Although a math genius and programming savant, he has little use for conventional instruction, and nearly flunked out of algebra. He spends his free time in the attic, building computers with parts scavenged from a local junkyard.
The irrepressible and über-confident Anjali is the exact opposite: a self-assured motor-mouth completely comfortable with public speaking (and a total hoot). She’s also a full-blown child prodigy, having scored a perfect 36 on the ACT … at the age of 13. Now, as a sophomore at Kentucky’s top science and engineering high school, she has built an arsenic testing device that could save millions of lives by identifying hazardous water supplies.
Ryan, Harsha and Abraham, seniors at the same Kentucky high school, have pinned their ISEF hopes on an electronic 3D-printed stethoscope that automatically connects to an online database of heart sounds, thereby allowing doctors to more accurately diagnose heart abnormalities. Biomedical talents aside, they’re also the most hormonal-normal of these students; Ryan, in particular, thinks nothing of partying hard the night before their presentation.
All these young geniuses notwithstanding, Myllena and Gabriel may be the most impressive duo. They’re best friends and research partners at a woefully under-resourced school in Ceará, one of Brazil’s poorest states. Amazingly, they weren’t stopped by such limitations; when the deadly Zika pandemic reached their hometown, they hit the lab and identified a protein that can inhibit the virus’ spread.
One can only drop the jaw and shake the head.
The amazing detail is that several of these nine students come from what appear to be very ordinary — even humble — families. Robbie’s amiable parents clearly can’t keep up with him, and don’t really know what to do with him … but they’re wise enough to get out of his way.
We also spend time with Dr. Serena McCalla, who teaches at Long Island’s Jericho High School, and has built a science curriculum that reigns as one of the state’s preeminent research programs. Most of her students are immigrants who speak English as a second language, but that doesn’t slow them down; under Dr. McCalla’s guidance, they blossom into science prodigies.
The kids adore her, and it’s easy to see why; she radiates trust, inspiration and a belief in her students’ abilities. She’s one of those rare teachers who can — and does — change lives.
In the ultra-competitive science fair realm, it’s remarkable for any high school to have one or two students who qualify for ISEF. During the year this film traces, Dr. McCalla had nine.
Although Costantini, Foster and their editors — Tom Maroney and Alejandro Valdes-Rochin — clearly cherry-picked what must’ve been hundreds of hours of footage in order to create their 90-minute film, we nonetheless get a strong sense of each student. They all get significant face time and back-story, and if the emerging portrait isn’t always entirely flattering, well, they’re too immersed in research to worry about such things.
Attempting to predict the ultimate winner is an exercise in frustration. Goodness, they all deserve to win.
Whether intended or not, Science Fair is a timely reminder that genius and ingenuity aren’t confined to native-born Americans, or to well-funded schools, or to children from wealthy families, with access to equipment and advisors that (for example) Myllena and Gabriel could only dream about.
Potentially life-saving and world-changing innovations can come from under-privileged citizens of any age, from all over the world; countries that bar them in favor of superficially “desirable” immigrants could be slamming the door on the next Jonas Salk, or Katherine Johnson, or Stephen Hawking.
And that’s as stupid as these kids are smart.
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