Writer-director Wen Muye’s bombastic anti-war drama Once Upon a Time in the Middle East arrives in Hong Kong having already grossed a whopping 2 billion yuan (US$298 million) at the mainland box office, delivering a message of peace and diplomacy through the appreciation of authentic Chinese cooking.

Lambasting both sides of an unnamed Middle Eastern conflict – the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq in everything but name – this latest effort by the Dying to Survive filmmaker addresses a parade of wartime atrocities, from devastating shock-and-awe strikes to black-site prisons, radicalised child soldiers and suicide bombings.

This is filtered through the perspective of an opportunistic yet affable Chinese chef, whose mouth-watering cuisine is the only thing uniting the warring factions.

Read my full South China Morning Post review here