A Chinese family drama that has quietly become one of the year's biggest box office stories is heading to international theaters. Dear You, directed by Lan Hongchun, will begin its global theatrical run on June 18, with Damai Entertainment handling worldwide distribution. The company was formerly known as Alibaba Pictures and rebranded in 2025.
According to Variety, the film has accumulated more than RMB1.5 billion, equivalent to roughly $221.6 million, at the Chinese box office. That places it second on the 2026 annual chart, behind only Pegasus 3. On the Chinese review platform Douban, it holds a 9.2 rating drawn from more than 700,000 user ratings, one of the highest marks for a local Chinese release in over a decade.
The film is set in two timelines. In the present, a young man named Xiaowei travels secretly to Thailand to find the grandfather who cut contact with the family decades earlier. What he uncovers is connected to the 1950s Chinese diaspora community in Bangkok and to qiaopi, the historic system of remittance letters that overseas Chinese workers sent home to their families. A woman named Xie Nanzhi, whose handwritten correspondence holds the key to the past, sits at the center of the historical storyline.
The film stars Li Sitong, Wang Yantong, Wu Shaoqing, Zheng Runqi, and Wang Xiaohui, with Thai actor Usha Seamkhum also appearing. The qiaopi tradition depicted in the film is recognized as part of the UNESCO World Memory Register.
The first wave of international release territories includes Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. A broader rollout is planned across more than 10 additional markets, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Dear You is Lan's third feature set within the Chaoshan cultural world, following I Am Sure I Can and Take Me to See My Mom. Damai Entertainment, which operates ticketing platforms Tao Piao Piao and Damai alongside the Beacon AI promotion and distribution platform, has participated in the production and distribution of more than 300 films.
