14,000 tickets for Dear You’s Teochew screenings sold out in under 3 hours

On Instagram, user ACG Civilizations shared photos showing queues forming outside GV Tampines from about 2pm that day, an hour before ticket sales began. The user also wrote that the online booking website became congested as tickets quickly sold out, while the queue at the cinema stretched beyond the outlet.

Another user, Zephyh, posted on Threads about waiting in line at GV VivoCity, where dozens of people queued to buy tickets.

“Monday afternoon queue at Golden Village VivoCity – all for one movie in Teochew,” the user wrote alongside a video showing the queue extending beyond the cinema. The crowd included people of various ages, with many elderly cinemagoers.

A spokesperson for GV told CNA Lifestyle the cinema operator was “grateful for the overwhelming response”.

“Through our observations, while some of the patrons were more senior, there was still a good mix of younger audience,” the spokesperson added.

In response to the demand, GV also confirmed that Clover Films submitted a request to the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) on Jun 29 for a further 100 screenings of the film in its original Teochew language.

Directed and co-written by Lan Hongchun, Dear You has become one of China’s biggest box-office successes this year.

The film follows two interconnected timelines: A grandson searching for his long-lost grandfather in present-day Thailand, and a newly married man who leaves China for Southeast Asia during the 1940s in search of work.

The release of Dear You in both Mandarin and its original Teochew dialect has sparked broader discussions in Singapore about dialects, Chinese cultural identity and the country’s language policies.