The British director and former model Lorna Tucker has a knack for making controversial documentaries. First was her warts-and-all film about fashion doyenne Vivienne Westwood, and now, with Amá, which has its world premiere in London next month, she tackles the sterilisation programme that targeted native American women.
But Tucker’s next project will be more fearless still: a chronicle of her own remarkable journey from teenage homelessness and drug addiction to a flourishing creative career.
Bare, which goes into production early next year, is a fictionalised account of her early troubled life on the streets of London. “I have called it Bare because that is how I feel about it, and we may well stick with that title,” she said. “I felt very exposed by writing something so personal. But I kept gravitating back to the period seven years ago, when I came out of rehab.”
Tucker, 35, said she wants to explain how events conspire to put young people on the streets. “A whole series of things led me there,” she said. “The only reason I survived is that I still had a mum and dad who loved me, even though I had suffered abuse from a neighbour. Most people don’t have any support and it must be so difficult.”
Tucker grew up with her mother and four siblings in Hertfordshire, but ran away from home at 15. After a summer on the streets she became addicted to heroin. “I want the next film to talk to policymakers, but also be entertaining. I really don’t want to make depressing films.”
After a period of residential rehabilitation she finally pulled herself out of 12 years of spiralling self-sabotage, earned money from modelling and gained entry to art school. “Five years ago I was on the dole and now, after the films, for the first time I can afford childcare; nothing fancy, just a nursery,” said Tucker, who has three children, aged 18, six and three, and lives in Lewes, Sussex.
“Some of the people I see on the street in London now were there with me. It’s quite bizarre. One night, after a few drinks with friends, I saw a friend called Greg selling the Big Issue. My friends told him to keep away. They were almost disgusted, and that had the effect of both putting me off them and making me want to do something to shine a light on homelessness.”
Praise for Tucker’s film about Westwood, although it proved unpopular with the designer herself, allowed her to complete Amá, a four-year labour of love produced by Raindog Films.
The director suspects British audiences will be astonished to discover how native Americans were systematically mistreated. “We still think about ‘Red Indians’, some sort of mystical, magical, totem-pole people from the past; something historical. But it blew my mind when I found out what had been going on,” she said.
This article was amended on 25 November 2018 to clarify that Bare is a fictional film.
