In the fall of 2024, Victoria Britton won a PitchDox competition sponsored by non-profit Hoodox at the Heartland International Film Festival in Indianapolis. She was given $10,000 to put toward her documentary project Bloom.
On July 22nd, that short documentary will premiere in the same city as part of one of several Indiana showcase programs at the 9th annual IndyShorts Film Festival. Bloom will encore screen July 26th and in attendance at both events alongside Britton and several others will be the man of the hour, Alex Babich.
Babich made waves in 2025 when he set a new Guinness World Record for tallest sunflower, beating a mark standing since 2014 by a German competition gardener. He had grown one in 2024 that soared to 28 feet and two inches, but it was the "Clover" specimen the next year at 35 feet and two inches that shattered the previous mark.
Babich immigrated to Fort Wayne, Indiana from Ukraine with his parents at age 14 in 1991 following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The sunflower is his native country's national flower, adding some serious symbolism to his efforts in the shadow of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war.
Britton co-directed and co-produced Bloom with Derek Hockemeyer and Malaki Tyne Bisel. The spark for the project actually dates back to the dreaded pandemic year of 2020.
"I first heard about Alex in 2020 while working as a news producer for the CBS affiliate in Fort Wayne," Britton explained in her Director's Statement. "The station had aired several profiles on him and his garden. Even then, it was clear to me that his passion for growing was driven by a deep desire to connect with nature and his family's roots."
In a funny twist, the seed for Babich's world-record plant came from Germany. Competition gardeners often exchange seeds with other growers and that's what he did with Burkhard Grendel, using it to grow his 2024 near-miss sunflower and then taking a seed from that plant to give life to the 2025 record setter.
[Bloom official website]
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