Hard Problems

Documentaries on brainy competitions—spelling bees, crossword puzzles, chess matches, etc.—have become a popular genre. Filmmaker George Paul Csicsery's Hard Problems focuses on the International Mathematics Olympiad, where some 500 gifted high school students from 90 countries spend two days solving a half-dozen increasingly difficult math problems (and are graded not just on being correct, but also employing elegance and imagination). The film documents the selection of the six members of the 2006 U.S. team via a series of national tests, before following them to Ljubljana, Slovenia, for the IMO finals, all the while interweaving interviews with the students, parents, siblings, and teachers, as well as event organizers and former competitors. Hard Problems is an engaging film about a form of advanced intellectual exercise that most viewers will be unable to fully appreciate (the actual problems faced by the participants are presented in a bonus PDF file). Although the contestants are presented as just-your-average-teens, all are clearly exceptional (despite one father's unsolicited insistence that his son isn't a nerd). Featuring both the full 82-minute version of Hard Problems and a 45-minute classroom edition, other DVD extras include featurettes on the history of the IMO, the relative rarity of female participants at the competition, and suggestions for how families can nurture their children with exceptional mathematical abilities. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (F. Swietek)