Chinese film fans spent over 10 billion yuan (1.6 billion US dollars) in movie theaters last month, setting a new record for monthly sales in a single market. 

The biggest draw was the action-packed thriller "Operation Red Sea” which raked in over half a billion dollars at the box office – the third-highest grossing Chinese film ever. 

CGTN's Tian Wei sat down with Dante Lam, the movie's director, to discuss the support the Chinese navy had given to the film production. 

"When I met the Navy, they wanted us to re-enact the Yemen evacuation," said Lam.

Loosely based on the the Chinese Navy’s March 2015 evacuation operation in Yemen and set amid militant unrest in a fictional Middle Eastern country, the film tells the story of a ship’s crew and an assault team as they rescue Chinese citizens and foreign refugees, resolving a potential nuclear crisis along the way.

During the film-making, Lam had asked the Chinese Navy how much they could offer to embellish this story. The Navy responded they would give him everything. 

"When I heard that I was relaxed, realizing I could just focus on the story itself. This was the first time I have dealt with this genre. I went to the military port, stood on our warships and inspected the most advanced equipment. I got a sense of how advanced China's technology has become," Lam noted. 

Apart from the Chinese Navy's backing, other countries also offered technical assistance. 

"Most of the film was shot in Morocco, except for the scene with the warships, which was shot in China. The scene with the Humvees and the tanks were all shot in Morocco. In fact, the vehicles were all provided by the Moroccan military. Of course, some other equipment were sourced from other places, for example the Troop Crawler was from the UK. So this movie brought together the technical power of many different countries," the director noted.

Lam said he was quite happy working on the project, so that more people could be awed by China's advanced Navy.