Viewers at the Austin Film Festival in Texas, US chose the latest Sam Voutas movie, Yesterday Island, to be honoured with the Comedy Vanguard Feature Audience Award.
The dark comedy sci-fi movie by Greek-Australian actor/filmmaker Sam Voutas shared the award with Richie James Follin’s Crystal Cross.
Yesterday Island, which is Voutas’ third feature length fiction movie, was partly inspired by Greek myth, its plot revolving around a mysterious, fictional board game called the Labors of Hercules.
“One of the big influences was stories my dad introduced me to as a kid from a very young age. Jason and the Golden Fleece, Hercules, Theseus and the Minotaur,” Sam Voutas tells the Greek Reporter.
“Lots of cunning trickery and revenge in those myths. It was super fun to bring a tiny element of that story-telling into the central theme of this film.”
New Sam Voutas movie a “macabre Groundhog Day”
Primarily shot in on King Island, Tasmania, Australia, Yesterday Island follows a failed novelist, Amos, who, after a midnight phone call from a friend, becomes trapped on a surreal subantarctic island with darkly comedic consequences.
It has been described as a “macabre Groundhog Day”.
The movie, written and directed by Sam Voutas, held its world premiere at the 41st Warsaw Film Festival in Poland in October, as part of the festival’s Official Selection, and its North American premiere at the Austin Film Festival in the U.S., also in October.
Yesterday Island stars Ivan Aristeguieta as Amos, joined by Florence Noble, Francis Greenslade, Genevieve Neve, David Fane, Luke Saliba, Fiona Crombie, Fiona Stewart, and Rohan Ganju.
It was produced by Melanie Ansley, an Australia-based Chinese Canadian novelist who has worked again with Voutas both in Red Light Revolution and King of Peking.
Sam Voutas’ big break in China and move to Hollywood
Filmmaker and actor Sam Voutas, born in Canberra to Greek ancestry, is an alumnus of the V.C.A, the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and the Toronto Film Festival Talent Lab.
Fluent in Chinese thanks to a brief childhood stay in China, he had his filmmaking debut in 2002 with the documentary The Last Breadbox, featuring Beijing taxi drivers in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games.
A few years later, Sam Voutas had his big break with his Chinese comedy Red Light Revolution, a comedy included on the British Film Institute’s list of 10 Great Films Set in Beijing.
After being nominated for Best Unproduced Screenplay at Australia’s 2008 Inside Film Awards, that movie was showcased at The Santa Barbara International Film Festival and won the audience award at The Terracotta Far East Film Festival as well as the People’s Choice Award at the 2011 Singapore International Film Festival.
Subsequently, Red Light Revolution was released theatrically in Canada, the UK and
Singapore, while Hulu released the movie in the US.
As an actor, Sam Voutas is best known for the role of Durdin in Lu Chuan’s acclaimed City of Life and Death, a Chinese movie about The Rape of Nanjing which won Best Director for Lu Chuan and Best Cinematographer for Cao Yu at the 4th Asian Film Awards in 2010.
Since 2012, Sam Voutas splits his time between Asia and Hollywood.
His second feature, King of Peking, world premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, and went on to play the BFI London, Stockholm, and Melbourne international film festivals, amongst others, picking up numerous awards.
It was released worldwide by Netflix in July 2018, receiving positive reviews in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Rolling Stone.
The screenplay for King of Peking was invited to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library, as part of their permanent collection, and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) recently invited Sam’s films written into their archives.
