About:
"...tender, intimate, funny and entirely absorbing." - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
"...a candid, unsentimental, perceptive and, at times, profoundly moving portrait of the highs and lows of motherhood." - Wendy Ide, Screen Daily
We have loved working with BAFTA award-winning filmmaker Victoria Mapplebeck again on her latest film Motherboard, a smartphone feature filmed over 20 years. Motherboard had its World Premiere on March 18 2024 at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX) and was nominated for the Dox:Award.
At the age of 38, Victoria Mapplebeck found herself single, pregnant and broke. Unable to combine motherhood with freelance directing, she was forced to abandon her career in TV, instead turning the camera on herself and her son, Jim. Mapplebeck first began documenting their lives with her old DVCAM before shooting almost daily on five generations of smartphones, from the iPhone 6 to the iPhone 13. She recorded hundreds of hours of footage, capturing each twist and turn in Jim’s life, from the thumbs-up he gave during her first scan, to his first day at college. The film is a celebration of messy lives and proof that epic journeys can begin and end at home, charting the trials, traumas and occasional triumphs of single parenthood.
Motherboard was warmly received at the festival, with highlights including an interview on BBC’s Today Programme with Katya Adler where Victoria discussed the making of the film, in addition to glowing reviews from Wendy Ide for Screen Daily and Peter Bradshaw for the Guardian, who gave the film four stars. Other reviews in film publications included Business Doc Europe (the voice of the European documentary trade), Cineuropa, Cineamore (which described the film as “an utterly remarkable achievement”) and High on Films. Victoria also featured on the Delightful Docs podcast (a platform for the diverse world of documentary talent).
Motherboard is made by First Person Films and produced by Mapplebeck’s longtime collaborator, Debbie Manners. The feature-length documentary has also been supported by OKRE and Autlook Filmsales.