The Shenyang cook, played by Shen Teng in “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East,” takes the head-chef job at the Dragon Restaurant because the pay could help clear his family’s debts. When war breaks out, he is shaken from his sleep and runs for an air-raid shelter. Director Wen Muye says he never stopped to think about how grand the film’s backdrop was.
Since opening on Aug. 11, the film has grossed RMB2.29 billion ($342 million) in China, making it the third-highest-grossing Chinese film of 2026. It is Wen’s follow-up to “Dying to Survive” and “Nice View.” The idea came from a news report and from the experiences of real Chinese cooks who run restaurants in the region. There is room there to express the relationship between war and peace.” Shen is one of China’s biggest stars and is closely tied to comedy.
Wen says that reputation was part of his thinking when he cast him in a war drama. In my mind, Xu Fu is a middle-aged Northeastern chef with a sense of humor, and Shen Teng is comparatively very well suited to the role,” he says. Once the fighting reaches the city, it becomes a shelter for people trapped by the war.
Wen wanted to follow an ordinary cook through a conflict, and the restaurant came with the job. That changes when Ma is killed rescuing children whom terrorists are forcing to become suicide bombers. Wen says he didn’t set out to ask what ordinary people owe one another.
To prepare, the team interviewed many people working in the region. They spoke to cooks, to workers from a wide range of trades and to locals who had lived through the war. Wen then tried to put himself in each character’s place at each moment.
What I actually want to tell is the story of specific people,” Wen says. Aarif Lee makes a special appearance as Tony, a Chinese American private in the U.S. Army, and Sherif Sobhy plays Zaid, a civil servant and restaurant shareholder whom the war drives to seek revenge.
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