Adam Gee: Mobile Storytelling as a Language of the Present [Video]

During the event organized by the Studio Phocéen association on June 14, 2025 in Paris, the British producer Adam Gee, who came especially for the occasion, delivered a reflection on the place of mobile creation in the contemporary audiovisual landscape.

Five-time BAFTA and Emmy Award winner Adam Gee has long been at the forefront of British television, pioneering formats such as Embarrassing Bodies (a mainstream, interactive health show on Channel 4) and Big Art Mob (a collaborative online project mapping public art on Britain's streets). He is now exploring vertical formats and the narrative possibilities offered by smartphones.

A new wave of mobile cinema

Adam Gee presented the Smart Film Fest at the event, an international festival he co-founded dedicated to films shot with smartphones. The entries ranged from scripted dramas to factual films, in both horizontal and vertical formats. But as he notes, “most of the vertical ones are scripted dramas,” already showing a clear trend from the first edition.

For Gee, the smartphone is a powerful tool for today’s storytellers: direct, accessible, and intimate. He compares this new freedom of creation to that of the Nouvelle Vague directors, who also embraced lightweight technology to break with the codes of traditional cinema. “It’s the tool of this generation,” he says.

He insists that this creative form is not a subgenre of TV or advertising: “It’s a different language. Not polite, but immediate. An art of the moment.”

As an example, he cites Missed Call, a short film he produced with Victoria Mapplebeck, which won a BAFTA TV Award. Shot entirely on a smartphone, it later inspired a feature film made from twenty years of footage across six generations of iPhones. The result is a kind of real-life Boyhood, chronicling an autobiographical journey through time.

Gee concludes that these short, often vertical formats are no longer marginal or niche. “They’re coming from all around the world,” he affirms, highlighting their growing presence and potential in shaping a new, vibrant visual culture.

Intervention to be discovered below.

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