The film was never supposed to travel this far. Dear You, directed by Lan Hongchun and shot in the Teochew dialect of southern China's Chaoshan region, opened in Chinese cinemas on April 30 to modest expectations. By June it had earned over $220 million domestically, ranking as the country's second-highest-grossing film of 2026.
On June 18, Damai Entertainment, formerly known as Alibaba Pictures and rebranded in 2025, launched the film's international theatrical run. The first wave of territories: Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. Releases in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam follow over the coming weeks.
The film follows Xiaowei, a young grandson who secretly travels to Thailand to find the grandfather who cut ties with the family decades earlier. What he finds is a stranger who spent years sending money and letters home. The story draws on the qiaopi system, a historic remittance network built by the Overseas Chinese diaspora throughout the 20th century.
Its 9.2 score on Douban, drawn from more than 700,000 user ratings, ranks among the highest posted by any local Chinese release in over a decade. "A letter may be short, but the sentiment is deep; rivers and seas can be crossed," Lan said, according to Deadline, on the film's relationship to overseas Chinese culture and identity.
Dear You is Lan Hongchun's third film in the Chaoshan cultural tradition, following I Am Sure I Can and Take Me to See My Mom. Whether international audiences follow this story across those rivers and seas is now the only open question.