Motherboard (in-person & online)

Documentary

BAFTA-winning shorts director Victoria Mapplebeck’s (Missed Call) extraordinary feature doc is a video diary filmed over 20 years that charts the experience of raising her son Jim alone.

At first filmed on an old DVCAM, then on smartphones – a mode of filmmaking Mapplebeck is passionate about for its intimacy and accessibility – Motherboard was shot on five generations of smartphones, from the iPhone 6 to the iPhone 15. Pieced together from hundreds of hours of footage, it captures each twist and turn in Jim’s life, from the thumbs-up he gave Mapplebeck during her first pregnancy scan to his first day at college, alongside her own struggles and successes (single motherhood, breast cancer, anxiety and the vagaries of her career as an artist and filmmaker).

The result is an impressive testament to life in all its glory: the joy, the pain and the mess, as well as an unusually frank and unsentimental look at motherhood. Beyond the pleasures of the film’s rich emotional intelligence, witnessing Jim transform from an image on a scan into an sweet, funny and self-reflective individual in 90 minutes is a miraculous experience.