Mother wins award for documentary about helping son find father

A mother who filmed her efforts to reconnect her son with his father after more than a decade apart has won a prestigious award.

The documentary, "Missed Call", follows Victoria Mapplebeck's story after her 13-year-old Jim asked if he could meet his dad.

The film is one of the first-ever documentaries to be shot on an iPhone and won the Best Social Media Short at the Arts and Humanities Council, Research in Film Awards, which took place at BAFTA on Thursday.

The 19-minute movie captured a series of conversations between Ms Mapplebeck and her son, about how he would reconnect with his father who had been absent since he was two-years-old.

Her son had no memory of his dad, all he had were the gifts his father once bought and the digital footprint he left behind.

According to the filmmaker, the documentary explored the many ways in which people's lives are lived and archived via the phones they hold so close.

But for the award-winning director, who released the documentary on YouTube in May, told ITV News making the film was a "hard" process.

"I felt it was really important to make a film about raising a child alone and the challenges of that, but also the many highs.

"I think Jim is testament to how well it worked out," Ms Mapplebeck said.

For audiences, the moment a message was sent to Jim's father was a particularly difficult scene to watch, but the teenager said he found the experience "really positive".

"When I think about it, it sounds really weird, but when it actually happens it feels so amazing, because you can relate with a lot of people.

"A lot of people have the same thing of having a single parent and sometimes I think people have a bad stereotype about it," he said.

Describing what it was like meeting his dad for the first time, he said "it's meeting someone that you think you've known but you actually haven't.

"It was really nice getting to know him and meet him for the first time," the youngster added.