Chickenhare and the Secret of the Groundhog review – time-travel fun for plucky hybrid critters

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A half-chicken half-hare, a skunk and a tortoise go in search of a 3,000-year-old groundhog in this wholesome animation with a surprisingly complex plot Although this animated feature doesn’t have a title as utterly awesome as its predecessor, Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness , it’s still a perfectly adequate 90-ish minutes of creamy pastel-coloured picaresque entertainment. It feels like it’s skewed in the direction of younger viewers given the simple character designs, general wholesomeness and easy-on-the-jokes tone, but the plot is surprisingly complicated. The lead character is named Chickenhare because of course he is half-chicken half-hare, although in practice he looks more like a hare than a chicken other than a tuft of feathers on the crown of his head. He is best friends with a skunk named Meg, equipped with the awesome power of stink and who is very butch-coded with her waistcoat, faux-hawk and tomboy characteristics; there is also a tortoise named Abe, who as you mi...
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Motherboard review – enthralling smartphone self-portrait of family life

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Copenhagen documentary film festival
Victoria Mapplebeck’s documentary stitches 20 years’ worth of footage into a home video love letter to her son, whose whole life so far is observed

Victoria Mapplebeck is a British director and lecturer who has worked in film, video, VR, user-generated content, and with her personal, revelatory projects she’s shown a magic touch with a smartphone camera: she won a TV Bafta in 2019 for her iPhone short Missed Call, about her life as a single mum, working out her relationship with her teenage son and his absent dad. Now she has developed this into a tender, intimate, funny and entirely absorbing full-scale feature documentary, the title of which is a reference to the central circuit board on a computer – meaning perhaps both the importance of the digital equipment she’s using to record everything, and her own central importance to the computer of their own family unit, the motherboard that isn’t allowed to go wrong or take a day off.

Motherboard is essentially a home video love letter to her son Jim that crafts 20 years’ worth of footage, showing her own life and that of Jim growing surreally from a tiny baby into a fiercely opinionated, smart young adult who suddenly towers over the parent. The film lasts around 90 minutes, which is about how long the growing up process seems to take in real life for a parent. And at the same time she has to deal with exhaustion, a breast cancer diagnosis, anxiety and her own complex relationship with her father who walked out on the family when she was still young.

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