Photo：Courtesy of the Weibo account of Dear You
A lot of Malaysian moviegoers have taken to social media to share heartfelt, emotional reviews following the Kuala Lumpur premiere of Chinese film Dear You, with many posting videos of themselves moved to tears or writing long articles to share their thoughts in recognition of this low-budget, no-celebrity production.
“After the premiere, my heart simply couldn’t settle,” Kku Yong Chuan, a 24-year-old Malaysian, posted on Rednote, or Xiaohongshu. “The film doesn’t rely on dramatic twists. It tells you in the most honest way that time with the people you love is limited.”
The film has been a huge success in the Chinese box office, rising from an underdog to prominence in rating and box office earnings thanks to strong word-of-mouth among moviegoers. As it begins its overseas release, the story is expected to resonate deeply with the Chinese diaspora overseas, especially those in Southeast Asia, as it tells the story Chaoshan migrants who journeyed to Southeast Asia from South China’s Guangdong Province decades ago.
Chuan told the Global Times on Wednesday that his own grandfather was migrated from China, and the movie’s plots mirrored his family’s historical memories, moving him deeply. He added that he planned to bring his parents to the cinema on the official release day in Malaysia for a second viewing.
Phoebe, a 22-year-old Malaysian of Chaoshan descent, also shared on Rednote that the film vividly showcases how older generations upheld faith and longing for the family’s roots.
During the premiere, local officials and cultural practitioners recognized the profound cultural value of qiaopi, the CCTV News reported.
Qiaopi is a unique form of personal correspondence and remittance letters used by overseas Chinese to communicate with their families back home. In turbulent centuries with underdeveloped cross-border communication, countless Chaoshan migrants from South China’s Guangdong Province traveled to Southeast Asia in search of a livelihood. Those handwritten family letters and remittance notes served as the only emotional bridge connecting overseas Chinese and their hometown families, carrying sincere longing, familial responsibility and homeland nostalgia.
Chiew Choon Man, Malaysia’s deputy minister of tourism, arts and culture, said during the premiere that qiaopi bears the most genuine emotions of overseas Chinese and constitutes a precious collective memory of local Chinese communities.
Lim Kah Hoe, executive director and head curator of the Malaysian Chinese Museum, ended up in tears during the screening, saying the film’s simple, down-to-earth storytelling touches people’s hearts because it is rooted in real life and universal family bonds, CCTV reported.
According to the executive director of the local distributor, the film will open on more than 100 screens across Malaysia with over 500 screenings every day. “It’s a film that truly deserves to be seen in a cinema,” the director said. “It will move everyone.”
The film has grossed 1.76 billion yuan ($260 million) in the Chinese mainland as of Wednesday, securing the second highest-grossing film in China’s annual box office rank, according to ticketing platform Maoyan.
It is set to officially debut in cinemas in Singapore and Malaysia on Thursday, and later in more countries.
While sweeping Malaysian audiences with cultural and familial warmth, the film is also set to spark a viewing frenzy in Singapore, ticketing platforms show. The film’s Chaoshan dialect version opened ticket reservations at 3 pm on Tuesday. Massive viewer traffic crashed the ticketing website, and all 4,816 tickets for the eight scheduled screenings on the first day were sold out within 1.5 hours, a rare blockbuster phenomenon in Singapore’s film market, Shanghai-based media outlet The Paper reported.
Some Singaporean netizens shared their ticket-purchasing experiences online. On Rednote, Singapore-based users swapped screenshots and survival guides for the virtual queue. “Ticket sales kicked off at 3 pm. I tried my luck at 3:30 pm, but the tickets were largely gone – a few seconds later and I would have missed out entirely… It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen a fully sold-out movie screening like this in Singapore,” one netizen named as “Xianbian” posted.
Local media reported that the Singapore premiere on Wednesday brought the film’s director Lan Hongchun and two lead cast members to the city, where they shared stories of filming and of their own encounters with qiaopi letters during research for the script.
Following its Southeast Asian debut, the film will launch its global rollout, covering Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland and Japan in late June, according to its official Sina Weibo account.