Motherboard is a smartphone feature about motherhood, recorded over 20 years by BAFTA winning British director Victoria Mapplebeck. Motherboard charts the trials, traumas and occasional triumphs of single parenthood. It’s a celebration of messy lives and proof that epic journeys can begin and end at home.
At the age of 38, Victoria 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 began documenting their lives with her old DVCAM before shooting almost daily on 5 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.
Motherboard is a tragicomedy which captures family life unfiltered, it’s a deeply personal and unsentimental film. Victoria captures a life where breast cancer, absent fathers and depression are part of the package, but where life still wins every time. And where everything will be fine as long as you don’t lose your sense of humour.
Motherboard is a complex portrait of a mother-son relationship from birth to adulthood, exploring Victoria’s life as a woman, mother and filmmaker. It’s an antidote to the judgmental and unrealistic expectations we have about motherhood, it turns the ‘supermum’ myth on its head, creating an honest, funny and relatable film for any mother who has wept tears of both joy and frustration.
Motherboard is made by First Person Films in partnership with OKRE and Autlook Filmsales. It’s filmed, directed and edited by Victoria Mapplebeck and executive produced by Debbie Manners.
MOTHERBOARD will premiere at CPH:DOX 2024 in Copenhagen and has been nominated for the CPH Dox: Award
Director’s statement
Many women are raising children alone, by choice or by circumstance. A mother’s heroic journey is not about how she leaves… but about how she stays. Motherhood as a story, is so infrequently told, because the world tells us that what mothers do is unremarkable and unimportant.
Motherboard is shot on small cameras in small spaces, but it explores big, relatable stories with a huge reach. It’s 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.
Team
Victoria Mapplebeck
Writer, Director and Editor
Victoria is a BAFTA award winning artist and director, who has worked in film, VR and immersive audio. Her works explore autobiographical stories which ask universal questions about our relationship with technology, parenting, health and wellbeing. Victoria is passionate about the innovation, intimacy and diversity of smartphone filmmaking. Her films have won many awards including a BAFTA.
Debbie Manners
Executive Producer
Salma Abdalla, Autlook Film Sales
Distributor
Autlook is one of the leading sales agents for feature documentaries, hybrids and doc series. Autlook offers a full spectrum of distribution, in-house, customized sales and festival strategies that help maximize revenues, audience engagement that fosters filmmakers’ careers, and an endless passion for the art of documentaries
