Touching heartstrings on missing children

Zhao Wei portrays the rustic rural wife of a child smuggler and Huang Bo plays a devastated father whose son was abducted. Photo provided to China Daily

Celebs attend premiere of film 'Dearest'

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"Maybe one film cannot change the world, but it can make things a bit better," Chan said at this year's Venice Film Festival in September, when the film was screened.

The film has grossed 300 million yuan ($46 million) since its premiere in China on Sept 25. Competing with Ning Hao's Breakup Buddies, a film about two men's journey across China in pursuit of sexual encounters, Chan's film won both popular and critical accolades. It even outshone The Golden Era, a film with some 30 veteran actors including youth icon Tang Wei.

Wang Changtian, CEO of Enlight Media, one of the companies that produced the film, was delighted by the audience response and the film's social impact.

"The sincerity and quality of this film has broken the boundaries between commercial and art-house cinema," he wrote on Chinese micro blog Sina Weibo. "It has social relevance, which is more important than the box office."

On the day after the film's premiere, the Ministry of Public Security said that reports of missing children and teenage girls would be immediately registered, instead of the required 24-hour waiting period.

In Dearest, a father goes to the police after finding his child missing, but is told he could only report the matter 24 hours later.