Victoria Mapplebeck

Directing

Born: March 4, 1965 (age 61)

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.