2024 Victoria Film Festival – Leilani’s Fortune

Filmmaker expected to attend
Currents
Energetic + Playful + Music-forward + Creative
Loveleen Kaur
Canada | 2023 | 80 min
Documentary

Queer, Ethiopian-Eritrean artist Witch Prophet (Ayo Leilani) is finally getting the support she needs after years of struggle to put out her album The Gateway Experience. Leilani’s Fortune is an energetic, serious yet playful exploration of Witch Prophet’s music and her beliefs and prophecies that are an integral part of it. She is becoming a crucial talent who is reshaping the next era of Canadian artists in this country’s music industry and she hopes for more serious validation.

Fun and captivating, and a little trippy, the story of Witch Prophet is told in a chapter-by-chapter style format with visuals and a mixed-media approach that provides an intimate look into her life, ups and downs, intersecting identities, relationships, and coming of age in the Canadian music industry. The queer, Black, and immigrant experiences Witch Prophet explores is what the director Loveleen Kaur aimed for as a documentarian who seeks to empower the voices of QTBIPOC artists who have been overlooked in the mainstream world. – KM