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Missed Call

How do you reconnect with a father who’s been gone for most of your life… what do you say, what do you write?

Winner of the Best Short Form Programme prize at the 2019 British Academy Television Awards, Victoria Mapplebeck returns to S/W with Missed Call, a 19-minute short documenting the director’s relationship with her teenage son, as they try to contact his estranged father. Missed Call is another deeply personal film that employs its intimate storyline to explore the many ways in which our lives are lived and archived via the phones we hold so close.

With 160 Characters focused on past communications, Missed Call is very much looking to the future. Opening with the last message Victoria and her son Jim received from his father, over a decade ago, Mapplebeck’s latest short follows the pair as they try to figure out if and how they want to connect with him. An intimate portrait of a single mother and her teenage son, Missed Call is more than just a glimpse into a family’s life, it speaks volumes about adolescence, absent parents and the growing role technology has in our lives.