Trinity CineAsia has acquired all rights in the UK, Ireland and France Dear youa Teochew-language family drama that became the heroic underdog story at the Chinese box office in 2026. The UK distributor has acquired the title from Hugoeast and Damai Entertainment and will open it in British and Irish cinemas on June 26, with a French theatrical release to follow. The acquisition was announced on the first day of the Shanghai International Film Festival, which runs from June 12 to 21.
Released in China on April 30 without much fanfare, Dear you It was produced for 14 million Chinese yuan (about $2 million) and starred largely with non-professional actors from the Chaoshan region — and is led by a 20-year-old female finance student with no previous screen credits. Six weeks later, the Chinese film’s gross has reached CNY1.69 billion (about US$250 million), per ticketing platform Maoyan – about 120 times its production cost – with the Han Han racing comedy just for Lunar New Year. Pegasus 3 Having earned more in the country this year. The film also brought a much-needed boost of energy to China’s box office, which is currently down about 40 percent, year-on-year, as of 2025.
The film legs show no sign of warping. On Friday, day 44 of his career, Dear you It more than doubled Steven Spielberg’s opening day takings Disclosure dayaccording to real-time Maoyan data — and the platform now expects a final domestic gross of more than 1.8 billion yuan ($266 million) for the Chinese feature. Word of mouth has done the heavy lifting: The drama, directed and co-written by Zhaoshan native Lan Hongchun, received a score of 9.2 on review platform Douban from more than 700,000 users, one of the highest ratings for a Chinese release in the past decade.
Dear you It derives its language and environment from Chaoshan, a corner of eastern Guangdong Province, around the cities of Shantou, Chaozhou and Jieyang whose Teochew-speaking communities sent dozens of immigrants to Southeast Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries. The story follows a debt-ridden grandson who travels to Thailand in search of a “millionaire” grandfather who left during the war and never returned – only to learn that the man is long dead, and that the letters his grandmother received for decades were written by a stranger. Lan said he spent three years interviewing more than 120 elderly residents of Chaoshan, and most of the plot is drawn from their accounts.
Thai actress Usha Simkum – the honorary grandmother of Thailand’s 2024 box office phenomenon How to make millions before grandma dieswhich the country submitted for an Academy Award that year – makes a special appearance in the film, a nod to its Teochew-Thai heritage.
Cedric Harrell, Managing Director of Trinity CineAsia, was contacted Dear you “One of the most notable box office success stories to emerge from China in recent years,” he said, saying the release will reach “many Asian communities who have long waited for the opportunity to see their history and identity reflected on screen in a meaningful way.”
For Trinity, the film joins a recent list of Chinese films in the UK which includes the global animation phenomenon Ni Cha 2Zhang Yimo’s spy thriller intimidationwinner of the B Jahn Prize at Cannes Resurrection And actor Jackie Chan Edge of shadow. The deal also expands the brand’s relationship with Damai, the distributor formerly known as Alibaba Pictures, which begins wider international rollout of the film on June 18 across Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, with North American and Australian dates expected to follow.
