Despite writing, directing and scoring her first film with limited experience, Rhiannon Bannenberg only realised afterwards how impressive her feat was.

Bannenberg's debut Ambrosia premieres in Warrawong this week.

It's a film that focuses on India, a woman dealing with the ongoing effects of a childhood accident. She spends the weekend with a group of friends and a newcomer threatens to change things forever.

Bannenberg, who lives in Bulli, studied music at university - including a post-graduate degree in film music.

But as for writing, directing and even cinematography (which she also took hold of for Ambrosia), Bannenberg had no experience.

It didn't stop her from making a feature film, though.

"It is very ambitious and I only see that in hindsight," Bannenberg says. "People said to me when I started, 'oh, maybe you should make a short film first', which is so totally the logical thing to do. But I'm probably a person of extreme measures."

Some of the skills from creating music she found transferable to film-making. As for the other, well, the internet and the library were helpful.

"I had a lot of the skills already and then any time that I had a gap in knowledge, I went on YouTube and I read books," she says.

"It was a lot of learning on the go but there's so much available if you look for it. It wasn't hard to find the information."

The genesis of the film was when Bannenberg began writing a story about a character named India. Other characters came along and a script was born.

The character of India, like Bannenberg herself, suffers from chronic pain from a childhood injury. But the director says, that's pretty much where the similarities between herself and the character begin and end.

"When I was 13 I had a horse-riding fall and was left with chronic pain," she says.

"Some of the scenes in the film and some of the issues that India the character had to contend with are absolutely experiences of my own.

"But the film is not completely autobiographical and the events are not the same."

The movie was filmed in the Illawarra and, while Bannenberg says she did use some secret locations, locals should be able to work them out.

It was shot at a range of locations: Sandon Point, Corrimal, North Wollongong and Minnamurra among others.

But when it came time to screen the film for the first time, the choice was easy.

"The distributors asked me where I wanted to do an official premiere and I was really adamant that it would happen in our local independent cinema in Wollongong. The film is 100 per cent local made so it was important for me to have the premiere there so everyone could see it."