Twice-winner of the Creative Wollongong Short Film Competition (run by the local council), Beau Ritchie has his sights firmly set on becoming a household name.

Beau's first film to take the top honour in Wollongong was The Diet in 2020, a spoof of the Stanley Kubrick thriller The Shining, and went on to feature in Flickrfest, while the second was a "more sentimental" film called Head In The Clouds, which won in 2021 (the last time the competition was held).

He's entering again this year and hopes to make it a hat-trick.

"I've entered pretty much all of the films I've made into competitions and they've done pretty well, they've been pretty successful," the 17-year-old told the Mercury.

"I wanted to become a filmmaker from a very young age and I'm trying my best to get opportunities ... So once I leave high school, I want to go to Australian Film Television Radio School [AFTRS] actors because I'm good at it and I'm passionate about it.

"It's definitely something I want to keep doing for the rest of my life."

The more competitions he wins the more "credibility" he gains in the field, he said, with the hope the accolades "snowball".

Beau said he gets his creative side from his mum, Melissa Ritchie, an artist who has featured in the prestigious Archibalds before.

"She's a big film buff ... as a kid, we had this little camcorder she would show me how to make films on iMovie," he said.

"It triggered something in my mind and made me think. 'Wow, the idea of creating art is so much fun'.

"And just to have that to look back on is really why I do it, because I love to use my time to create these beautiful [films] and the whole art of creating stuff is just why I do it. It's just so much fun."

The Creative Wollongong Short Film Competition is back for the first time since 2021, with categories for kids aged 12 to 24, and adults 25 and up.

There will also be free film-making workshops during the April 2024 school holidays.

Each entry needs to add the key feature of water which can be included as an object, an overall theme, or a location.

"Film-makers could also focus on the aquatic wonders of our local environment: think Lake Illawarra, beaches, rock pools or creeks in our local area," the competition page states.

Short film entries will close on Wednesday July 31. For more details, visit: https://wollongong.nsw.gov.au