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Lan Hongchun’s recent Chinese box-office hit, “Dear You,” explores a multigenerational story rooted in Thailand’s Teochew immigrant community, while writer-director Wen Muye’s “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” places a Chinese individual within the upheaval of an unnamed Middle Eastern war (a clear stand-in for the Iraq War). I am not particularly knowledgeable about contemporary trends in the Chinese film industry, but even as a casual viewer, I have the sense that contemporary Chinese cinema is increasingly operating on a larger geographical scale. With its enormous domestic market, Chinese cinema has the resources to remain commercially self-sufficient, yet filmmakers seem increasingly willing to engage with transnational narratives, using foreign spaces to explore questions of Chinese identity, migration, cultural memory and China’s relationship with the wider world.
Although “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” is primarily a Chinese production, it was made with substantial Egyptian participation, including several Egyptian actors in prominent roles. Wen Muye’s renowned earlier film, “Dying to Survive,” shows him to be adept at balancing different tones. His blending of black comedy and searing drama fascinatingly captured the struggles of Chinese people to access affordable medication for life-threatening diseases. Similarly, in “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East,” Muye uses meaningful forays into heartwarming drama and natural humor to make us digest its inherently somber and harsh setting. Moreover, the “Once Upon…” in the title gives the film a dark fairy-tale tone, as it is largely told in flashback, detailing the unimaginable trials and tribulations of a Chinese chef in the Middle East.
The film opens with Xu Fu (Shen Teng) being detained in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. The authorities question why he has returned, particularly because his record shows that he was once suspected of involvement in a terrorist attack. To clear the doubts surrounding his presence, Xu Fu recalls his time in the country during its turbulent period, revealing how his resilience and sense of humanity eventually led him to save numerous lives.
In 2002, middle-aged Xu Fu, having fallen into heavy debt after an accident at his restaurant in Northeast China, leaves his teenage daughter, Xu Le, and his mother behind to become the head chef at the Loong Restaurant in Bahata, the fictional Middle Eastern capital that serves as a stand-in for Baghdad. Upon arrival, Xu Fu is greeted by the restaurant’s Chinese manager, Ma Junsheng (Jiang Qiming), who speaks Arabic fluently.
He initially serves as the bridge between Xu Fu and the locals, particularly the restaurant’s owner, Zaid (Sherif Sobhy), a deputy minister in the Ministry of Water and Power. In his first encounter with Zaid, the latter complains that Xu Fu’s food is too salty. Xu Fu then playfully makes it clear that he wants the Chinese cuisine to remain authentic rather than be turned into “Americanized fusion dishes.” Though the two struggle to understand each other across the language barrier, Zaid appreciates his new chef’s firmness of character.
The narrative also introduces a group of children who steal food from the restaurant. They come from a nearby orphanage, whose local teacher, Lina (Naira Al-Qasim), is Ma Junsheng’s fiancée. Among them is Saif (Omar Sherif), a rebellious boy who playfully mimes shooting Xu Fu with an imaginary gun when they first meet. Their initially antagonistic relationship gradually develops into a deep bond, with Saif eventually becoming like a surrogate son to the chef.
Soon, the American invasion of the country begins, and one night, Xu Fu and Junsheng witness the devastating bombing of the city by US aircraft. As the local government apparatus collapses, the Loong Restaurant finds an unlikely lifeline because of its location beside the newly established Safety Zone. During the day, the restaurant supplies meals to workers at the Ministry of Water and Power. At night, it becomes a gathering place for soldiers and foreign correspondents, as it is one of the few places in the city where alcohol is available in the dry zone.
The orphans also begin helping at the restaurant, with Saif, who displays a natural talent for cooking, becoming Xu Fu’s apprentice. Xu Fu and Zaid eventually become equal partners in the business, each trying in his own way to provide for their family. Both are presented as caring fathers doing their best to protect and support their children. Yet their circumstances are very different. Zaid is a privileged government official, but even his position cannot help his young daughter, suffering from lymphoma, to receive the right medication. It is increasingly difficult and expensive to obtain under the wartime sanctions, forcing Zaid to rely on medicine smuggled through American-controlled channels.
While the Loong Restaurant under Xu Fu’s care remains a rare island of joy and safety amid the chaos, that fragile sanctuary collapses with the downfall of Zaid and his family. This becomes the turning point from which Xu Fu, Junsheng, and Saif are beset by one misery after another. Their detention in a prison guarded by the US military is horrific in its own right, yet it feels comparatively less devastating than their subsequent captivity under a militant organization led by the man known as Headmaster (Ahmed Seleem), who indoctrinates orphaned children and trains them to become suicide bombers.
Throughout these grim events, it is Xu Fu and Junsheng’s shared empathy for others, along with Xu Fu’s conflicted and evolving relationship with Saif, that gives the film much of its extraordinary emotional weight. The American soldiers, with the notable exception of the Chinese-American soldier Tony (Aarif Lee), are initially portrayed through their casual brutality and arrogance. Tony occupies an interesting middle position: although he is an American soldier, his Chinese background gives him an immediate affinity with Xu Fu and Junsheng, while his own desire to leave the war further separates him from his fellow soldiers. Yet the narrative gradually introduces nuances that complicate our feelings toward even the other Americans.
A soldier named Morgan, who lost his family in the Twin Towers attacks, relishes torturing the Headmaster with chilli water. Xu Fu secretly replaces the mixture with a harmless substitute, sparing the man from suffering. Morgan later beats up Xu Fu and Junsheng following an incident concocted by Saif, further establishing his capacity for cruelty. Yet Wen Muye does not leave Morgan as a one-dimensional villain. When the soldiers are captured during a terrorist raid, the film extends some sympathy even toward Morgan, whose own history of personal loss makes him more than simply an embodiment of American military brutality. The Headmaster, however, represents something far more disturbing than individual acts of torture.
What struck me is how little the film uses Islam to explain the violence around its characters. The country is left unnamed, and the militants are never given much of a religious identity beyond the fact that they invoke faith. We don’t see the familiar imagery of prayer, mosques, or the loud chanting of “Allahu Akbar!” that has become such a common shorthand for terrorism in American and Indian cinema. The Headmaster is defined instead by what he does: recruiting orphaned children and turning them into suicide bombers. To me, the film seems less interested in explaining this violence through religion than in showing what war, the collapse of the state, and the destruction of ordinary lives can do to people.
I also found a deeper purpose in the way the film presents its local characters through the conditions of war. Saif begins as one of the children displaced by the conflict and, at one point, becomes willing to join the Headmaster’s organisation. Xu Fu’s relationship with him offers the film’s answer to that fate. He refuses to see Saif simply as a victim, a militant or an orphan defined by war, and instead nudges him toward building a life beyond those categories. The ending, in which Xu Fu tries to give Saif and the other children precisely that possibility, gives greater meaning to their relationship.
“Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” is also an interesting film visually, particularly in its use of cooking montages against images of real-world violence. In an early sequence, the preparation of food and the fire from the cooking are juxtaposed with starving people on the road and the fires erupting during the riots. Later, when the Headmaster sends the children out as suicide bombers, their last meal includes an egg. The film cuts between the simple act of cooking the egg and the impending bombing, turning the preparation of food into something increasingly ominous. By the end of the sequence, even Xu Fu’s cooking pot is blackened, turning the object associated with facilitating nourishment into an image symbolizing the senseless destruction.
The film also beautifully connects the act of preparing food and eating with human connection, setting these simple acts against the various ways people are taught to hate one another. There is a striking echo between two moments involving Xu Fu and Zaid. After losing his wife and daughter, Zaid refuses to eat, so Xu Fu asks him to open his mouth and feeds him at his most devastated. Later, when Zaid has become a militant and Xu Fu is about to be shot, Zaid asks Xu Fu to open his mouth, unexpectedly saving his life. The reversal is striking in the way it echoes that earlier gesture. Zaid does not suddenly have a change of heart, and the film does not present the moment as redemption. Yet there is something moving in the fact that, despite everything the war has turned him into, his bond with Xu Fu still seems to leave a trace of humanity behind.
If there is one aspect that felt excessive to me, however, it is the film’s occasional violent set pieces. The initial bombing of the city is meticulously captured from the perspective of an anxious Xu Fu and Junsheng as they run toward the shelter. Yet the subjective camera movement, with its steady forward motion through the chaos, at times resembles a video-game point of view, turning the destruction into a spectacle. This is particularly striking because the montages approach similar images of violence and instability with much greater restraint and imagination. Perhaps the film is reaching for the scale of a big-screen war spectacle, but the visceral quality of these sequences occasionally feels at odds with the film’s otherwise somber tone and its more thoughtful approach to depicting violence.
Eventually, critics well-versed in Chinese messaging in popular media might point out the propagandistic and grandstanding elements of “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East.” But for me, the heightened drama hits its emotional beats with precision and makes a genuine appeal to our shared humanity without reducing the conflict to simple blame or falling back on familiar stereotypes. With its rousing performances and meaningful exploration of the human cost of war, Wen Muye’s transnational drama is certainly one of the more interesting Chinese films of recent times.
