South Africa's Oscar Entry 'Variations on a Theme' Was Written in Microsoft Excel

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents South Africa's Oscar Entry 'Variations on a Theme' Was Written in Microsoft Excel.

Imagine opening Microsoft Excel – and instead of a spreadsheet, the script for South Africa's Oscar entry appears. For "Variations on a Theme" (original title: Variasies op 'n Tem), that's reality: co-writer and co-director Devon Delmar says he wrote the entire film in Excel – "we have five story days, so we has five columns and then 30 shots that repeat like clockwork," he told the Hollywood Reporter at the 70th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) in October 2026.

A Goat, a Scam, and a Village as a Rhythm Engine

Beneath the unusual origin story lies a movie with tangible drama: at its center is Ouma Hettie, an eighty-year-old goat herder in South Africa's Kamiesberg mountains. When she falls for a scam promising her back pay for her father's unpaid service in World War II, her family gets pulled in deeper than she'd like. The LFF itself describes the film as: "A poetic and distinctive visual style infuses playfulness into this insightful study of a woman's resilience and a community that exists close to the land".

"Variations on a Theme" was written and directed by Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs; Jacobs had previously directed "Carissa." Delmar additionally took on editing duties. The film's festival journey is impressive: it won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) this year and now screened at the LFF in mid-October 2026.

Why Excel, of All Things?

The answer lies in the film's structure itself. Delmar explains to THR that "Variations on a Theme" lives on repetition – routines, rhythms, and cycles. The everyday recurrence in the village harmonizes, says Delmar, "with the awareness that the exploitation taking place there in 2026 is simply history repeating itself. What happens to the villagers who are scammed out of their money is exactly what happened in the 1940s with the protagonist's father – he was exploited by the government, and that's exactly what happened to the colonized people across several generations."

To make this repetition visible on screen as well, Delmar turned to Microsoft Excel. Five story days became five columns, 30 shots that recur like clockwork. "I've joked that it's the only film ever, potentially, to be written on Microsoft Excel," he said in the interview. What sounds like a banal spreadsheet is in truth the skeleton of a film built on schema, formula, and a single seed.

When the Village Itself Sets the Tempo

The fact that rhythm and repetition in this film aren't a theoretical concept has to do with co-director Jason Jacobs. Jacobs comes from the very village shown in the film: born there, went to school there, later moved to Cape Town and then returned to his grandmother. "Anyone would be able to observe the routine, the rhythm of this space," Delmar explains. "If you sit in a corner for long enough, you'll start to notice the routines and the rhythms that occur naturally. 'Here comes Mr. So and So with his goats when the sun is setting,' and so on. The routines are very ingrained into the space, and it's very beautiful to observe the musicality of the space within that rhythm." The two had already shot a short film there a few years ago.

Arvo Pärt as the Secret Compass

A second, less obvious source of inspiration comes from the far north: the work of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. "We were borrowing from an Estonian composer called Arvo Pärt," says Delmar – "He's the big guy in Tallinn in terms of music, and he wrote music very formulaically. He came up with these almost formulas or equations for his music. He would work on a very small kernel of an idea or a seed, but once he unleashes that little seed, it manifests the most unbelievably beautiful and spiritual music."

For "Variations on a Theme," Delmar and Jacobs translated this idea into film structure: seize a single core idea and let it unfold. "So this idea of repetition became very important to our way of thinking, and then it was very natural to incorporate that into the structure of the film to show this repetition and the cycle of violence, and the daily routines of this woman," Delmar summarizes. The image he chooses for it is that of an origami: "It's like an origami thing you do, and then a pop-up book appears."

"We were borrowing from an Estonian composer called Arvo Pärt. He's the big guy in Tallinn in terms of music, and he wrote music very formulaically. He came up with these almost formulas or equations for his music. He would work on a very small kernel of an idea or a seed, but once he unleashes that little seed, it manifests the most unbelievably beautiful and spiritual music."

— Devon Delmar, Co-Writer and Co-Director of "Variations on a Theme," in conversation with the Hollywood Reporter