Wen Muye, “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” aka “Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant” (2026)
Its story told using flashback narrative structure, this Chinese film carries a powerful (if at times overly melodramatic) message for peace, mutual understanding, compassion and reconciliation, and decries war, unnecessary violence and personal revenge. The plot is based on real accounts of Chinese nationals living in Iraq and running businesses (mostly restaurants) there during the US invasion of that country in 2003, the US occupation that followed, and the jihadist insurgency that gave rise to ISIS as a result of US misrule and corruption. In the early 2000s, unemployed chef Xu Fu (Shen Teng), heavily in debt after a mishap ruins his restaurant business, leaves his mother and his teenaged daughter in northern China to travel to the fictional Middle Eastern city Bahata, and takes up a position as head chef of the Dragon Restaurant, owned by local government official Zayd (Sherif Sabry), where he is befriended and helped by the restaurant’s floor manager Ma Junsheng (Jiang Qiming). Ma’s girlfriend Lina (Naira Al-Qasim) is a teacher at a nearby orphanage. One of the children there is mischievous Seif (Omar Sherif) who sometimes leads the kids on midnight raids into the restaurant’s kitchen to snack on leftover food. Xu Fu frowns on the little brats and their antics, but over time becomes fond of them.
Xu Fu’s cooking proves popular with the Bahata locals and the restaurant quickly becomes the biggest show in town with even wealthy Westerners having to line up with ordinary working people for a lunchtime table. Even at this time, trouble between Bahata and the US has been brewing, resulting in large-scale US bombing of the city and US Army occupation. The Chinese government calls on its citizens to evacuate but Zayd persuades Xu Fu and Ma to stay. Because Zayd works for a government ministry administering water and electricity supplies, his patronage enables the restaurant to supply food to ministry workers, and as a result the restaurant is not short of food and drink even as city residents must make do with candles at night and water shortages. As the orphanage has been destroyed in the bombing, the children there end up sheltering in the restaurant. Seif becomes Xu Fu’s apprentice after the chef discovers the boy cooking midnight meals for the children.
A chance encounter with Chinese American soldier Tony Wang (Aarif Rahman) leads to the restaurant supplying alcohol to US soldiers during the evenings. Xu and Ma become wealthy, and Xu abandons his original plan to return to China after two years. However, their luck evaporates after Zayd resists being hit up by the US military administration for more money, for medicine to treat his daughter’s cancer; the Americans later bomb and destroy Zayd’s home, killing his wife and child. Zayd later disappears, but some eighteen months later, Xu and Ma are arrested by the US military and thrown into a prison (notorious for its torture of Arab prisoners) after a car bombing organised by Zayd that kills US soldiers, including Tony Wang. Xu, Ma and Seif are forced to work in the prison kitchen and to do various other unpleasant tasks: in doing so, they meet a prisoner, Ali (Ahmed Salim), being waterboarded by the sadistic Lieutenant Morgan (Russell Shealy). Ali happens to be the local head of a militant organisation with an extremist Islamist ideology.
Xu, Ma and Seif’s fortunes change again when the prison is stormed by jihadists on Christmas Eve; all the US soldiers are either killed or taken prisoner, and everyone is taken to the jihadists’ hideout. In the fighting, Seif loses an eye while throwing a grenade away to save Xu and Ma’s lives. At the jihadist hideout, Ali spends his time indoctrinating young children – some of them kids from Lina’s orphanage – into his ideology, grooming them into becoming suicide bombers. Seif himself is drawn to Ali’s teaching but after sneaking into the boot of a militant’s car and seeing one of Ali’s teenage proteges being killed on a mission, the youngster is quickly disabused of his fantasies about soldiering for Ali. Meanwhile, Xu and Ma plot their own escape; but after a food poisoning incident, Xu must decide what to do to save the remaining orphanage children and Seif as well as escape.
Throughout the convoluted plot, there is present a strong message of empathy and compassion for the misfortunes ordinary people suffer during war and chronic violence, particularly in the decisions they make in the heat of the moment that end up causing more suffering to themselves and to others. A plea for the care of children and other vulnerable people, for social stability and harmony, is also made; the Loong Restaurant becomes a place of sanctuary where orphaned children find shelter, food, comfort and a purpose in life. Food itself becomes mediation and diplomacy between and among different hostile agents, and whenever people sit down together to eat, boundaries are breached, a common understanding becomes possible, and people learn valuable life lessons and experiences.
Various characters are not merely stereotypes but undergo growth and maturity: initially just out for money, Xu learns what it is to be a real parent capable of self-sacrifice and eventually transforms into a real hero and mentor: and Seif learns the hard way of what real jihad – the inner struggle between one’s conscience and desires – entails. Even very minor characters like Tony Wang and Morgan, themselves both brutalised and traumatised by what they have done, are more nuanced in their backgrounds and motivations than might be expected, and their behaviour and actions along with those of Ali and Zayd demonstrate how personal desire for vengeance can become a self-perpetuating cycle of war and more brutal violence. Possibly the most complicated character of all is Zayd: much of what he does and what happens to him late in the film is very puzzling, but one possible interpretation is that (off-screen) he bargains with Ali to release Xu and allow him to return to China, on condition he brings all the children back – hence Zayd’s decision to put a hood over Xu’s head and shooting him in the face with his mouth open – but we never learn who alerts border patrol police to rescue the children. The character arcs involved in the film demand considerable skill from the cast, and all of them – even the child actors – do incredible work. The role of Xu especially is likely to be a career-defining role for Shen Teng, hitherto known for his work in comedies.
The film has all the style of a huge blockbuster, which can make for some very uncomfortable viewing whenever there is bombing, building compounds are raided, or people are killed. Melodrama and some very cheesy, heart-rending scenes, especially scenes reflecting memories of someone killed, run dangerously close to insincerity, for a film appealing to emotion as well as empathy and compassion. There is no doubt though, that an anti-war film that treats suffering and the futility of vengeance on both sides, and which cares deeply for those hard-hit by war and violence, is much needed in times and contexts in which political / economic / military elites push for demonising the poor and taking over their lands and resources. And here is where “Once Upon a Time …” might be said to fail, in not placing the blame for initiating the cycle of war, vengeance and violence on those who benefit from that cycle.