Victoria Mapplebeck
Directing
Biography
Victoria Mapplebeck is a BAFTA award winning artist and film director, Victoria’s films explore autobiographical stories which ask universal questions about our relationship with technology, parenting, health and wellbeing. For the last decade, Victoria has been shooting continuously with smartphones. She is passionate about the innovation, intimacy and access of smartphone filmmaking. In 2017, Victoria wrote, filmed and directed 'Missed Call' which was the first commissioned short film to be shot on the iPhone X. ‘Missed Call’ explores her son's decision to reconnect with his absent father. ‘Missed Call’ won Best Short Form Programme at the 2019 BAFTAs and Best Documentary Short at The 2019 Broadcast Digital Awards. In 2021, Victoria co founded and co curated 'SMart, The London International Smartphone Film Festival', with director and former Channel 4 commissioner Adam Gee. Victoria has also experimented with VR and immersive audio. In 2019, she was awarded an EPSRC Immersive Documentary Encounters Commission, to create a VR project which told the story of her breast cancer (as patient and film-maker) 'The Waiting Room VR' premiered at the 76th Venice Film Festival and won The IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling In 2024, Victoria completed Motherboard, a smartphone feature documentary, which she filmed, directed and edited. Motherboard charts the joy, pain and comedy of raising her son Jim alone. Over 20 years, Victoria 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 pregnancy scan to his first day at college. Victoria captures a life where both she and Jim survive her breast cancer diagnosis, two generations of absent fathers and Jim’s rollercoaster teen years ‘Motherboard’ received funding from OKRE and Women in Film and TV. It had its world premiere at CPH:Dox in Copenhagen, where it received a four star review by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Motherboard had its cinema release in summer 2025, playing in over 70 cinemas in the UK and Ireland. It received extensive media coverage and received a 2025 Grierson nomination for Best Cinema Documentary, three nominations at the 2025 BIFA Awards and was selected as one of the Guardian’s top 50 films of 2025 In 2024, Victoria won The Women in Film and TV Director Award. This award recognises outstanding achievement by a woman director in film, TV or digital media within the last two years. Victoria is also Professor of Digital Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London and is also a member of BAFTA.
Known For
In 2017 I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I decided to film my time in waiting rooms, surgery and chemotherapy. Shot exclusively on the iPhone X, The Waiting Room is an unflinching portrait of the blood, sweat and tears of cancer treatment. At home I filmed with my teenage son, as we came to terms with how family life was transformed by a year of living with cancer. The Waiting Room challenges the cultural myths that surround this disease, putting under the microscope the language of illness. The Waiting Room documents illness from a patient’s POV, exploring what we can and what we can’t control when our bodies fail us. The Waiting Room 30 minute smartphone short was broadcast on The Guardian website as part of their documentaries strand.
The Waiting Room
When a vintage Nokia is recharged, a compelling real life story is revealed. A story that unfolds in just 100 texts and tells the story of how two people, meet, date, break up and deal with an unplanned pregnancy. Shot entirely on an iPhone 6, 160 Characters uncovers the secrets and stories, buried in our mobiles both old and new.
160 Characters
At 38, film director Victoria Mapplebeck found herself single, pregnant, and broke. Filmed over 20 years, Victoria explores a life where she and her son Jim, survive two generations of absent fathers, her breast cancer diagnosis and Jim’s rollercoaster teen years. She first began documenting their lives with her old DVCAM before shooting on five generations of smartphones. Victoria 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 documents a lifetime of parenting, capturing the comedy and drama of solo motherhood in all its unfiltered glory
Motherboard
Missed Call explores the many ways in which our lives are lived and archived via the phones we hold so close. Shot on an iPhone X, Missed Call explores Victoria’s relationship with her teenage son Jim , as they discuss how they’ll reconnect with his father, who’s been absent for a decade. How do you reconnect with a father who’s been gone for so long…what do you say, what do you text? Missed Call begins with the last message he sent in 2006 and ends with the first call to him over a decade later. The film explores Missed Call was commissioned for the Real Stories’ YouTube channel and SVOD app. Since it launched, it has received over a million views across YouTube, Facebook Watch and other video platforms. Prizes BAFTA - Won Best Short Form Film award - 2019 - Missed Call was the first commissioned short film to be shot on the iPhone X to win a BAFTA Broadcast Awards - Won Best Short documentary - 2019
Missed Call
Hand-washing, having disinfectant gel at the ready, keeping your distance, and feeling anxiety: they’ve all been familiar aspects of daily life since the start of the global pandemic. And as it did for most people, lockdown radically changed family life for director and multimedia artist Victoria Mapplebeck and her 17-year-old son Jim.