22/03/2024 - BAFTA-winning director Victoria Mapplebeck explores single parenthood in a candid smartphone documentary

Single parenthood and independent filmmaking have a lot in common: trials and tribulations, growing pains, and the joys of seeing your creation develop a life of its own, to name a few. It takes sincerity of the highest order to film yourself and your family daily, in an attempt to figure out how messy and glorious life can be. British director Victoria Mapplebeck succeeds in doing just that with Motherboard, competing for this year’s DOX:AWARD at CPH:DOX.

As a smartphone documentary, Motherboard is a continuation of Mapplebeck’s BAFTA-winning short Missed Call, which was the first commissioned short film to be shot on an iPhone X. Both films explore the director’s relationship with her teenage son, Jim, in a triangle of sorts with his absent father, who remains anonymous. In a way, Missed Call can serve as a teaser for the feature, where the 20-year time span can be captured more thoroughly, from the first scan to Jim’s first day of college. As time passes, the technology also changes, from an old DVCAM to five successive generations of iPhone, but the only markers of these changes are the image quality and format. Towards the film’s end, when Jim is negotiating his independence, Snapchat videos form a space of his own that is equally safe and impenetrable.

An unvarnished, inviting look into motherhood and the way it evolves into a web of familial dynamics, Motherboard readily wears its heart on its sleeve. The footage is untouched, the content sincere and oftentimes blunt; these two elements make a story relatable, but what the film achieves in more subtle ways is an emotional pull that still leaves enough space for the protagonists to breathe and be their imperfect selves. A radical amount of trust (both in the process and in future audiences) is necessary for such a project to exist and stand out, and during the two decades of living and filming, Mapplebeck was always keen to show the hopes and the despairs of it all.

Motherboard emerged as a kind of substitute when the director’s freelance work and single motherhood could no longer coexist, but watching the film, one never has the feeling of it being a placeholder. In fact, the urgency of this project as both a document and a way of experiencing life through filmmaking has imbued the feature with a singularity: it seems like it could not possibly have been otherwise.

However strong the emotional pull of sharing 90 minutes with Victoria and Jim is, the film itself often rushes through forms when knitting the footage together, and the collage aesthetic can feel a bit too fragmented to complement the already scattered pieces of a grand “supermother” narrative. The fast-paced montage may be economical, but those moments of silence and refusal to speak carry much more of the film’s weight than its more extravagant formal cues.

Motherboard was produced by the UK’s First Person Films, and Autlook Filmsales handles the film’s world sales.