12-year-old Mindy Ho, the answers to her fortunes lie in a book of Taoist magic tricks. With the help of some complex rituals, she hopes to fix her single mother’s financial difficulties and improve her seemingly hopeless romantic prospects. Her mother disapproves of her magic, so Mindy is forced to cast her spells covertly. Soon, her misdirected charms cause an aging security guard to lose his job and a local butcher to win the lottery. Undeterred by her blunders, she continues using ever more elaborate methods to achieve her goals, eventually resorting to psychics and love potions. The results are equally comic and tragic.

With her third feature, LONG LIFE, HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY, Mina Shum returns to the setting of her delightful first feature, DOUBLE HAPPINESS (Festival 1995). Back in Vancouver’s Chinatown, Shum weaves together the stories of a group of endearing characters through an exploration of the nature of fate and destiny. LONG LIFE, HAPPINESS AND PROSPERITY seduces us with a charming look at the nature of luck and the desire to control our fate. Director Mina Shum again teams up with the irrepressible Sandra Oh as Mindy’s harried but caring single mother, Kin, and Valerie Tian is delightful as the precocious Mindy. Shum rounds out her cast with a group of characters who delicately tread the line between keeping the faith and losing it. Each is seeking the answer to that eternal question: how can you change your luck?

35mm, 90 minutes