Sam Voutas

Sam Voutas is an Australian actor and independent filmmaker. He is best known for writing and directing Red Light Revolution, China's "first sex shop comedy" which was nominated for Best Unproduced Screenplay at the 2008 Australian Inside Film Awards, showcased at The Santa Barbara International Film Festival and won the audience award at The Terracotta Far East Film Festival. Voutas played Durdin in Lu Chuan's acclaimed City of Life and Death, a Chinese film about The Rape of Nanjing. The film won Best Director (Lu Chuan) and Best Cinematographer (Cao Yu) Awards at the 4th Asian Film Awards in 2010. Voutas wrote and directed the documentary The Last Breadbox, featuring Beijing taxi drivers in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

Career Voutas was born in Canberra, Australia and is of Greek ancestry. His mother is from Melbourne and his father Anthony is from Kastania.

Voutas has spoken in interviews about film censorship in China, saying "I'd love to keep making movies [in China], my dilemma is whether a script can be passed by the censors without having its wings clipped. My fear is that increasingly censors are the directors of films, and that directors and producers, fearing cuts, then self-censor themselves from the get-go. That's an environment that isn't too conducive to creativity in general. So perhaps my next film will be about censors themselves and the final cut will run exactly zero seconds long."

Filmography