BAFTA award-winning director Victoria Mapplebeck’s smartphone feature Motherboard will have its UK premiere at BFI London Film Festival on Sunday, Oct 13, with a second screening on Saturday, Oct 19. Book Tickets.
Motherboard is a smartphone feature exploring motherhood, filmed over 20 years by BAFTA award-winning British director Victoria Mapplebeck. The film charts the trials, traumas and occasional triumphs of raising a child alone. It’s a celebration of messy lives and proof that epic journeys can begin and end at home.
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. Victoria 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 15. She recorded hundreds of hours of footage, capturing each twist and turn in Jim’s life, from the thumbs-up he gave her during her first scan to his first day at college.
Motherboard is a complex, personal and unsentimental portrait of a mother-son relationship from birth to adulthood, exploring the ways in which Victoria and Jim navigate two generations of absent fathers and Victoria’s breast cancer diagnosis when Jim was just 13. The warm, playful, and sometimes strained relationship between Victoria and Jim unfolds against a backdrop of unfiltered family life.
Motherboard is the antidote to the judgmental and unrealistic expectations we have about motherhood, creating an honest, funny and relatable film for any mother who has wept tears of both joy and frustration.
“Many women are raising children alone, by choice or by circumstance. I wanted to make a film which reflected the diversity of contemporary family life and created an unfiltered and unromanticised portrait of solo motherhood,” said Mapplebeck. “I’ve been filming the highs and lows of our family life since Jim was born. We’re really excited that Motherboard will have its UK premiere at LFF. Motherboard has been 20 years in the making – Jim and I are thrilled that we’re finally at the finish line.”
Iain Dodgeon, Executive Producer for OKRE, said, “OKRE are delighted to back Victoria in bringing this incredibly intimate story to the screen, supporting her in the challenges of portraying her lived experience of single parenthood with care and sensitivity. Provocatively authentic and highly personal, Motherboard taps into universally familiar themes yet offers a surprisingly fresh perspective.”
Stephanie Fuchs, CEO of Autlook Filmsales, said, “Motherboard is the creative and singular work of a fantastic filmmaker. It’s full of conflicts, beauty and humour, a family movie which is cross-generational in its themes and stories. Motherboard will appeal to anyone interested in the universal themes of family, parenthood, childhood and how memories are captured in the digital age.”
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