China’s biggest box-office surprise this year is about to face a very different test.
Dear You, a low-budget Teochew-language family drama that has grossed nearly US$300 million in mainland China and become a hit in Southeast Asia, will open in North American cinemas on September 4. Its release will offer a measure of whether a Chinese film built around migration, family and regional identity can travel beyond Chinese-speaking audiences and find a wider American public.
The film’s journey is significant not simply because of its commercial performance. Dear You has also become part of an increasingly sensitive debate about Chinese cultural influence overseas, particularly among Chinese communities outside the mainland. What appears on the surface to be an apolitical story of family sacrifice has prompted questions about whether Chinese cinema can shape perceptions of China abroad and, ultimately, contribute to its soft power.
The story centres on a debt-ridden grandson from the Teochew, or Chaoshan region of Guangdong Province. He travels to Thailand in search of the grandfather he believes abandoned his family, hoping that the man behind years of qiaopi — letters sent by overseas Chinese migrants to their families, often accompanied by remittances — can help him repay his debts.
Instead, the journey becomes an exploration of his family’s past and the relationship between his grandparents. The film’s emotional foundation is therefore not geopolitics but migration, memory, family obligation and sacrifice.
Its North American distributors are betting that those themes can overcome linguistic and cultural barriers.
Dear You is being released by Well Go USA, a Texas-based, family-owned distributor specialising in Asian cinema for North American audiences. The film will open on 86 screens across 23 US states and at two locations in Canada. For an independent film, the release is modest, although more showings are expected.
Doris Pfardrescher, the company’s president and CEO, said the director had created a story about “family, sacrifice, and the enduring power of human kindness that resonates across cultures”.
Well Go USA released 17 Chinese films last year and is scheduled to release 10 this year, making it an important participant in a specialised market alongside China Lion Film Distribution, CMC Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics.
The distributor has also adapted its promotional strategy for North American audiences. According to Will Zang, a Los Angeles-based publicist specialising in Asian cinema who is helping promote Dear You, its trailer incorporates reactions from film critics and media reviews.
“We expect [Dear You’s] North American release to connect with more audiences and help them appreciate the richness and emotional power of Chinese cinema and culture,” Zang said.
The film has already attracted praise from critics, although not necessarily because it represents a new cinematic form. Simon Abrams, a New York-based film critic, described Dear You as an old-fashioned melodrama with a “big three-hankie conclusion”. Yet he also called it “genuinely disarming and a real crowd-pleaser”.
The question is whether being a crowd-pleaser in China is enough to make it one in America.
Chinese films are increasingly seeking audiences outside the mainland. In 2025, Chinese films generated US$140 million in overseas box office through October 20, according to a blog post by China’s National Film Administration, with films released in 46 countries and regions. Fifteen of China’s 20 highest-grossing domestic films had also received overseas releases.
North America has become part of that expansion. Fifty-four new Chinese films were released there in 2025, generating US$38.44 million in box-office revenue, an increase of 158 per cent from 2024, according to the state-affiliated Global Times.
Ne Zha 2, helped by an English-dubbed version, became the fifth-highest-grossing Chinese film of all time in North America, surpassing Jackie Chan’s The Medallion.
But these figures also reveal the distance Chinese cinema still has to travel. Commercial success inside China does not automatically translate into an equivalent performance in the United States and Canada.
The experience of Jia Ling’s YOLO illustrates the problem. The 2024 Chinese New Year blockbuster, about a woman who turns to boxing and rebuilds her life after personal setbacks, grossed more than US$400 million in China. Yet after Sony Pictures acquired its international distribution rights and released it in more than 200 North American cinemas, it earned only about US$2 million in the US and Canada.
For Chinese-language cinema, the gap between domestic popularity and North American reach remains substantial.
Stanley Rosen, a professor at the University of Southern California specialising in Chinese politics and soft power, said Chinese-language cinema had been an important component of China’s soft power in the early 2000s, particularly through martial arts films.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, released in 2000, became an exceptional example. The Oscar-winning film grossed US$128 million in the United States and held the record for the highest-grossing foreign-language film for two decades.
Dear You enters a markedly different market. Rosen expects its audience to consist primarily of Chinese-speaking Americans, although he believes strong reviews and positive word of mouth could improve its performance.
“If it makes US$2 million, that would be very good,” he said.
There is another reason the film’s North American release will attract attention. Its success has already generated an argument over what the film represents beyond the cinema.
In May, Singaporean journalist Sim Tze Wei argued that Dear You could be understood as a form of “non-coercive” United-Front work, suggesting that its emotional appeal could strengthen a sense of Chinese identity among overseas Chinese. The argument provoked a sharp response from Chinese state media and online commentators, who accused the writer of politicising a story about ordinary family sacrifice.
Wang Yan, an associate research fellow at Beijing Foreign Studies University, rejected that interpretation in a CGTN commentary titled “It’s cinema, not politics”. Describing Dear You as a “United Front work”, Wang argued, imposes a “contemporary political label onto a heritage that transcends borders and generations”.
Rosen is also sceptical that uniting the Chinese diaspora was the filmmaker’s purpose. He points to director Lan Hongchun’s previous films promoting Teochew culture as evidence that an interest in shared heritage does not necessarily mean the film was conceived as a United Front project.
At the same time, Rosen said the Chinese government may welcome the film as an opportunity to unite overseas Chinese, while acknowledging that it remains unclear how China’s censorship system may have influenced the script.
That ambiguity reflects a wider question surrounding the international circulation of Chinese cinema. A 2025 report by scholars from Hong Kong and Germany found that Chinese-language film releases in North America have expanded steadily since 1992. The market has evolved from festival-driven art-house acquisitions towards genre films, including martial arts, horror and triad films, as well as releases timed simultaneously with the mainland market.
The researchers argue that distributors’ acquisition, marketing and release strategies have played a critical role in determining which Chinese-language films reach North American audiences, a factor that must be considered alongside debates about Chinese soft power.
For Dear You, however, the immediate challenge is less ideological than commercial: can a Teochew family story built around migration and memory persuade audiences unfamiliar with its language and cultural setting to buy a ticket?
The answer may determine whether the film becomes another example of Chinese cinema succeeding primarily among the diaspora or a more significant case of a Chinese-language story crossing into the wider North American market.
China’s cultural influence is certainly not confined to cinema. Rosen points to products ranging from Labubu dolls to Chinese coffee brands entering Western markets. Yet he argues that the broader US-China rivalry remains far more influential in shaping global perceptions of China.
Citing Pew data showing perceptions of China improving as views of the United States have declined, Rosen said: “What is moving the needle much more is Donald Trump.”
“That’s been much more helpful to Chinese soft power than Dear You,” he said.
The North American release therefore carries a significance larger than the fate of one film. Dear You arrives as an unusually successful Chinese cultural export, carrying a story rooted in one regional Chinese community but addressing experiences of migration, family and sacrifice that are not confined to China.
Whether that emotional appeal can move beyond Chinese-speaking audiences will be tested in American cinemas from September 4. Its box-office performance may reveal how far Chinese cinema has travelled — and how much further it still has to go.
