In an age of instant messaging and video calls, how has a movie about handwritten letters and long periods of separation performed so well at the box office?
This has been the achievement of Chinese film Dear You, which has topped the China box office for more than five consecutive weeks since its release there on April 30.
One of 2026’s highest-grossing Chinese films, it has brought in more than 1.7bil yuan at the country’s box office so far, despite having a predominantly non-professional cast. The film was produced on a modest budget of 14mil yuan.
Its director Lan Hongchun, lead actress Li Sitong and lead actor Wang Yantong were in Singapore on June 17 for its gala premiere at Sands Theatre.
Speaking to the media before the premiere, Lan, 41, said that in today’s fast-paced information age, people can appreciate the time and effort older generations had to put in to communicate with one another.
He said: “Decades ago, it could take one or two months to receive a letter. During this long wait, the intensity of one’s emotions would accumulate and grow stronger. That is why writing and sending letters back then can evoke deep emotions that we might not be able to experience today (when we text).”
His film features a grandson searching for his long-lost grandfather in present-day Thailand, and a flashback to events from the 1940s, showing the grandfather leaving China for South-East Asia to support his family.
Through historical letters and remittances between his grandparents, the man uncovers family secrets and a hidden, half-century-old love story involving his grandmother.
The circumstances under how remittance letters, or qiaopi, were sent might be why the film has resonated so deeply with audiences, Lan said. “Letters are short, but the emotion behind them is plentiful.”
He adds: “Back then, if someone wanted to send a photograph back home, he had to make lots of preparations, such as finding a photographer, nice clothes and the right occasion, and then mailing the photo. It was not as easy as taking a wefie nowadays.
“These preparations would take days, but when recipients saw the photo, they could sense the sender’s effort, and that sense of happiness was unforgettable.”
Actress Li, 22, said: “Although our communication methods have changed, the emotions between people have remained the same. That is why (the film) can still move us and touch our hearts in the modern era.”
She added that people in the past had to condense all their thoughts and feelings of longing into a letter, which might be only 100 words long. This sincerity, anticipation and long wait around sending and receiving letters was “very emotional and moving” for her.
Actor Wang, 26, added that sending letters back in the day also incurred significant costs. He said: “The effort senders went through expressed the depth of emotion behind each letter.”
Before remittance agencies faded away in the 1980s, China had received over 30 million qiaopi, according to the film.
These documents were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2013, and praised for recording first-hand the contemporary livelihood and activities of overseas Chinese, as well as the historical and cultural development of their residing countries in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Lan, who co-wrote the script, said its story was partly inspired by his experience growing up in the city of Chaozhou in China and listening to his parents tell stories about their ancestors – including Lan’s great-grandfather – coming to South-East Asia to work.
When Lan was filming the documentary Flavours Of Teochew From The Four Seas (2026), he also spoke with many overseas Chinese, whose stories inspired events depicted in Dear You.
Li and Wang have no formal acting training, and are starring in their first roles. Li plays a woman in the 1940s who appears quiet on the surface, but also has a more sentimental side.
The actress said that because the character’s personality differed from her own, and she was not familiar with the time period, she turned to real historical documents provided by the film’s creators.
She said: “By looking at these materials, we were able to (learn about) the stories of that era and try to get as close as possible to the historical context.”
Wang, who plays the grandfather in his youth during the 1940s, shared that much of the film’s dialogue was improvised.
He said: “We did not follow the script most of the time. On set, the actors and director would discuss on the spot how the scene would go. We would set a general direction and then improvise.”
The movie is filmed almost entirely in Teochew but dubbed in Mandarin for certain markets. - The Straits Times/Asia News Network
