Lauren Hatchard is a young woman in a hurry.

Just 18 months after graduating with a first class honours degree, she has already been working as an assistant production manager on a blockbuster Bollywood movie.

It's just another step on the road to fulfilling her dream of directing her own feature on her own terms - in Birmingham.

Now 23, she was born in Moseley on the night of a lunar eclipse, reason enough for her mother Jaqui to have bought her a telescope and an acre-sized plot on the moon.

But it's behind a camera that Lauren wants to excel.

Next Tuesday, her six-minute short film Happy Birthday Dear Universe will screen at UnderWire, the UK's only short film festival 'dedicated to showcasing the raw cinematic talents of women'.

Lauren says: "I made it in October at the OFFLine festival in Ireland, where you pay for three days' accommodation and equipment hire and then start shooting.

"You get 72 hours to do everything, including editing and I used a Canon 5D MkIII with Zeiss lenses.

" My film, using my own screenplay for the first time, finished second out of 13 entries and I've won s500 worth of more equipment hire and s200 in cash."

Lauren welcomes UnderWire's move to Wolverhampton, having been nominated for a cinematography award in London for her fire station documentary, We Were Here.

"I started off making a conventional documentary about the closure of a 1970s fire station, which was also losing its pole because of health and safety reasons.

"I then ditched the talking heads I'd shot and made a different kind of film to show something that was 'of the past'.

"The film has been buried in a time capsule for future generations to watch, which is a theme that fascinates me."

For the last fortnight, Lauren has been working behind the scenes at Yamla Pagla Deewana 2 during a major Bollywood shoot at Gatecrasher nightclub on Broad Street.

"I'd never have been able to become an assistant production manager so fast if I'd gone to London," she says.

"Having been based in Stoke for three years while I was at Staffordshire University taking my degree in advertising and commercial film production, I can now see so much potential in Birmingham for making films here."

In 2004, I walked future Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) around Birmingham city centre and he said his perception changed from thinking 'it was a place to make a gangster movie to one more suited to a Richard Curtis comedy'.

After visiting Nechells and Duddeston Railway station with Lauren, she came to a different conclusion.

"I love the grubbier and grotty areas that most people would overlook," she says.

"Things like the gas holders are amazing structures... I just love to look through the cracks of normality and at Duddeston Railway Station, where I ended up by accident a few weeks ago, I can just see so much poetry.

"I think areas like these have huge potential for a surreal, fantasy adventure set in places like Digbeth where you see posters being scratched off walls.

"I look at things like these and think: 'What could be going on here that nobody has noticed?'

"It's about time Birmingham was put on the map as a filmmaking city and I want to help to do that."

Lauren is the daughter of canvas artist Jacqui Hatchard and dad Nick, who works for nPower but is also a storyteller.

She has two younger sisters, 20-year-old nurse Becky who fancies studying law and 18-year-old Katie, who has had experience of doing make-up on an Oxfam film that Lauren worked on.

Her favourite director is Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and its cinematographer, Ellen Kuras, is her favourite woman filmmaker.

"Unfortunately there aren't that many women around because it's a male dominated industry," she says.

"Hopefully UnderWire can help to change that. People of all genders will be welcome to come along and network - it will be a friendly evening in a beautiful, independent venue."

* UnderWire is being held at Wolverhampton's Light House Media Centre on Tuesday, December 11.

Details: www.light-house.co.uk or call 01902 716055. See also: www.underwirefestival.com and www.laurenhatchard.co.uk