# Chinese Take-Away (中国人的流浪记)
**Chinese Take-Away** (Spanish title *Un cuento chino*; 中国人的流浪记) is a 2011 Argentine-Spanish comedy directed and written by Sebastián Borensztein, starring [Ricardo Darín](https://www.edgepedia.org/ricardo-darin) as Roberto, a reclusive Buenos Aires hardware store owner whose ordered life is upended when he takes in Jun, a Chinese immigrant who speaks no Spanish and is searching for his only living relative.[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) • [2](https://www.flicks.co.uk/movie/chinese-take-away/) It was the most-viewed Argentine film of 2011, with nearly one million spectators, and won the 2012 Goya Award for Best Iberoamerican Film.[3](https://www.latercera.com/diario-impreso/director-de-un-cuento-chino-cuenta-las-razones-del-exito-de-su-pelicula/?outputType=base-amp-type) • [1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | *Un cuento chino* ("A Chinese Tale") |
| Director and screenwriter | Sebastián Borensztein[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) |
| Production | Argentina (40%) and Spain (60%) co-production; Pampa Films, Castafiore Films, Aliwood Mediterráneo, Tornasol Films[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) |
| Cast | Ricardo Darín (Roberto), Huang Sheng Huang (Jun Quian), Muriel Santa Ana (Mari), Iván Romanelli (Leonel)[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) |
| Release | Argentina 24 March 2011; Spain 17 June 2011[4](https://repositoriobiblioteca.udp.cl/ST2845.pdf) • [1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) |
| Running time | 90 minutes[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) |
| Box office | Nearly one million spectators in Argentina, the country's most-viewed national film of 2011[3](https://www.latercera.com/diario-impreso/director-de-un-cuento-chino-cuenta-las-razones-del-exito-de-su-pelicula/?outputType=base-amp-type) • [16](https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/cine/hollywood-domino-la-taquilla-local-nid1437293/) |
| Awards | Goya 2012 for Best Iberoamerican Film; Best Film and Audience Award at Rome; Best Film, Actor and Director at the Argentinian Academy Awards 2011[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) • [2](https://www.flicks.co.uk/movie/chinese-take-away/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Roberto has lived a reclusive life for twenty years, confining himself to his hardware store in Buenos Aires after a hard reversal of fate.[2](https://www.flicks.co.uk/movie/chinese-take-away/) • [5](https://www.dcine.org/un-cuento-chino) One day, watching planes take off near the airport, he sees a taxi throw a Chinese man onto the sidewalk. The man is Jun, who has traveled to Argentina to find his uncle, his only living relative, carrying just an address written on his arm and unable to speak Spanish. Roberto offers to take him to the only address he has.[2](https://www.flicks.co.uk/movie/chinese-take-away/) • [4](https://repositoriobiblioteca.udp.cl/ST2845.pdf)
The film's opening backstory is deliberately absurd: in China, Jun and his girlfriend are in a boat in the middle of a lake, where he is about to propose marriage, when a cow falls from the sky onto the boat and kills her.[4](https://repositoriobiblioteca.udp.cl/ST2845.pdf) Borensztein said the idea came from a real news item: "Everything began the day I read in a newspaper the news of a cow that fell from the sky onto a Japanese fishing boat and sank it."[6](https://www.continental.com.ar/se-estrena-cuento-chino---todo-empezo-el-dia-que-lei-en-un-diario-la-noticia-de-una-vaca-que-cayo-del-cielo-arriba-de-un-pesquero-japones-y-lo-hundio---conto-borensztein_a60e4e38cdd2dffc864cdf052) He framed the story around two people from the antipodes of the world, geographically and culturally, who meet by a fortuitous event and turn out to be, in his words, the key that opens the door for each to resolve his life.[7](https://www.culturamas.es/2011/06/22/69472/)
## Production
Borensztein had made his name in television with series such as *El garante*, *La condena de Gabriel Doyle*, and *Tiempo final*, and had directed one earlier feature, the comedy *La suerte está echada*.[8](https://www.ambito.com/edicion-impresa/sin-un-buen-guion-yo-no-me-animo-dar-un-solo-paso-n3674032) Born in 1963, he is the son of Tato Bores, a celebrated Argentine comedian and icon of humor and satire; he began his career in advertising in the 1980s before working as writer, producer, and director of his father's television programs between 1988 and 1994.[9](https://www.incaa.gob.ar/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Un-cuento-chino.pdf) • [10](https://www.cronista.com/clase-ejecutiva/luz-camara-intuicion/)
He wrote the part without a specific actor in mind, but when he showed the finished script to Ricardo Darín, the actor agreed to play Roberto.[6](https://www.continental.com.ar/se-estrena-cuento-chino---todo-empezo-el-dia-que-lei-en-un-diario-la-noticia-de-una-vaca-que-cayo-del-cielo-arriba-de-un-pesquero-japones-y-lo-hundio---conto-borensztein_a60e4e38cdd2dffc864cdf052) Ignacio Huang, who plays Jun, was cast through an open casting in Buenos Aires; he had arrived from Taiwan with his family at age 12 and was already an Argentine citizen.[6](https://www.continental.com.ar/se-estrena-cuento-chino---todo-empezo-el-dia-que-lei-en-un-diario-la-noticia-de-una-vaca-que-cayo-del-cielo-arriba-de-un-pesquero-japones-y-lo-hundio---conto-borensztein_a60e4e38cdd2dffc864cdf052)
The film was shot between 13 September and 6 November 2010, on locations in the peripheral neighborhoods of Buenos Aires and at the Ciudad de la Luz studios in Alicante, Spain, together with Mutxamel and Bocairent.[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) Rodrigo Pulpeiro was the cinematographer, Lucio Godoy composed the score, and Fernando Pardo edited.[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) Producers were Gerardo Herrero, Juan Pablo Buscarini, Pablo Bossi, and Isabel García Peralta.[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf)
## Release and reception
The film opened in Argentina on 24 March 2011 and in Spain on 17 June 2011.[4](https://repositoriobiblioteca.udp.cl/ST2845.pdf) • [7](https://www.culturamas.es/2011/06/22/69472/) In its first four days in Argentine theaters it drew more than 210,000 spectators.[10](https://www.cronista.com/clase-ejecutiva/luz-camara-intuicion/) Within ten weeks, 900,000 people had seen it in Buenos Aires alone, and by year's end it was the most-viewed Argentine film of 2011 with close to a million spectators.[7](https://www.culturamas.es/2011/06/22/69472/) • [3](https://www.latercera.com/diario-impreso/director-de-un-cuento-chino-cuenta-las-razones-del-exito-de-su-pelicula/?outputType=base-amp-type) At Cannes it had been sold to major European territories.[7](https://www.culturamas.es/2011/06/22/69472/)
On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 85% critics score from 13 reviews and a 79% audience score; on IMDb it rates 7.3.[11](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chinese_take_out) • [12](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/chinese-take-out) Critics received it as a warm human comedy: Paul Byrnes of the *Sydney Morning Herald* called it "a superb human comedy," and Nick Dent of *Time Out Sydney* described it as a buddy movie in which two damaged men from opposite sides of the world find unexpected common ground.[11](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chinese_take_out) In the United States it received a theatrical release on 1 June 2012, and it is currently available to stream free on Kanopy and to rent or buy on digital platforms.[13](https://www.moviefone.com/movie/chinese-take-away/oN7tPpYmSJKv0hUFprN516/where-to-watch/) • [12](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/chinese-take-out)
## Awards
The film won the 2012 Goya Award for Best Iberoamerican Film, Spain's principal award for Latin American cinema.[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf) At the 2011 Rome International Film Festival it won Best Film and the Audience Award, and at the Argentinian Academy Awards in 2011 it won Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Director.[2](https://www.flicks.co.uk/movie/chinese-take-away/) At the Mannheim-[Heidelberg](https://www.edgepedia.org/heidelberg) festival in 2011 it took the Audience Prize, the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Prize, and a special mention from the Ecumenical Jury.[1](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf)
## Themes and context
Scholarship on the film places it within a small body of Argentine films that thematize Asian migration, alongside *La Salada* (2015) by Juan Martín Hsu and *My Last Failure* (2017) by Cecilia Kang. These films put the relationship between [Argentines](https://www.edgepedia.org/argentines) and immigrants from Asia at the center, and invite a debate on the imaginaries of migration and hospitality against the backdrop of discriminatory practices articulated around origin, nation, and culture.[14](https://revistas.usp.br/prolam/en/article/view/144359) Chinese migration to Argentina, which settled visibly from the 1980s onward and produced a second generation, sits outside the European immigration that Article 25 of the Argentine Constitution explicitly encourages, a contrast the film's encounter plot dramatizes.[14](https://revistas.usp.br/prolam/en/article/view/144359) Academic readings have also drawn on thinkers such as [Hannah Arendt](https://www.edgepedia.org/hannah-arendt), Zygmunt Bauman, Jacques Derrida, and Roger Silverstone to read the film's treatment of trust, community, and the encounter with the Other.[15](https://gato-docs.its.txst.edu/jcr%3A8fd67688-7e62-43b0-960f-8c054a26d8b5/2015-10-28%2BBook%2B10.2.pdf)
## References
1. [Un cuento chino / Chinese Take-Away, pressbook, Ministerio de Cultura de España](https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr%3Adcb605b8-9635-46cc-bbb2-5cb5af8f875e/l62011s-z.pdf)
2. [Chinese Take-Away, Flicks (UK)](https://www.flicks.co.uk/movie/chinese-take-away/)
3. [Director de Un Cuento Chino cuenta las razones del éxito de su película, La Tercera](https://www.latercera.com/diario-impreso/director-de-un-cuento-chino-cuenta-las-razones-del-exito-de-su-pelicula/?outputType=base-amp-type)
4. [Análisis psicocinematográfico de Un cuento chino, Universidad Diego Portales](https://repositoriobiblioteca.udp.cl/ST2845.pdf)
5. [Un cuento chino (2011), Dcine.org](https://www.dcine.org/un-cuento-chino)
6. [Se estrena Cuento Chino, Continental (entrevista a Borensztein)](https://www.continental.com.ar/se-estrena-cuento-chino---todo-empezo-el-dia-que-lei-en-un-diario-la-noticia-de-una-vaca-que-cayo-del-cielo-arriba-de-un-pesquero-japones-y-lo-hundio---conto-borensztein_a60e4e38cdd2dffc864cdf052)
7. [Ricardo Darín y Sebastián Borensztein nos hablan de su película "Un cuento chino", Culturamas](https://www.culturamas.es/2011/06/22/69472/)
8. ["Sin un buen guión, yo no me animo a dar un solo paso", Ámbito](https://www.ambito.com/edicion-impresa/sin-un-buen-guion-yo-no-me-animo-dar-un-solo-paso-n3674032)
9. [Un cuento chino, INCAA](https://www.incaa.gob.ar/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Un-cuento-chino.pdf)
10. [Luz, cámara… intuición, El Cronista](https://www.cronista.com/clase-ejecutiva/luz-camara-intuicion/)
11. [A Chinese Tale, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chinese_take_out)
12. [Chinese Take-Away streaming, JustWatch](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/chinese-take-out)
13. [Chinese Take-Away (2012) Where to Watch, Moviefone](https://www.moviefone.com/movie/chinese-take-away/oN7tPpYmSJKv0hUFprN516/where-to-watch/)
14. [Chinese immigrants in the globalized Buenos Aires, Brazilian Journal of Latin American Studies](https://revistas.usp.br/prolam/en/article/view/144359)
15. [Confianza, comunidad y eclipse del otro, Texas State University](https://gato-docs.its.txst.edu/jcr%3A8fd67688-7e62-43b0-960f-8c054a26d8b5/2015-10-28%2BBook%2B10.2.pdf)
16. [Hollywood dominó la taquilla local](https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/cine/hollywood-domino-la-taquilla-local-nid1437293/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2011 to 2012 › Released in 2011*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license