‘I turned to Mumbai to understand why rich US kids are so unhappy’

Over the course of two years, writer-filmmaker Tracey Jackson turned the camera on her own life and family, taking a hard look at why privileged children are so unhappy and the most dysfunctional in the world. Jackson filmed Lucky Ducks while travelling from New York to California, Montana to Mumbai interviewing experts, gurus and people who were grappling with raising their own children.

“I started with the question ‘why is today’s upper middle class youth so unhappy, when they have more than any generation?’ I wandered through many doors and learned many facts, I wanted to make a film with answers and charts and graphs. But, the film that came out was a very personal story about my mother, my daughter and myself,” said Jackson.

“I sought the advice of experts and gurus, and ultimately plunked my 15-year-old daughter for three weeks in Mumbai. She was forced to live in a small flat which she shared with four or five people and worked in a slum school,” she said.

Did the Mumbai slum school experience change her daughter? “Life is changing her,” quipped Jackson. The film-maker says she ultimately found her own answers; “I saw that like many questions the answers were inside me all along.”

Filming Lucky Ducks had a strong impact on Jackson’s 24-year-old camera person who opted to spend seven months in Mumbai teaching slum children.