MICHELLE Lehman dreamed of an Oscar before going to the Victorian College of the Arts.

She is now one step closer to Hollywood after winning the Sony Tropfest Short Film Festival with her cute comedy Marry Me.

Her prize includes a trip to Los Angeles and meeting executives who might be able to help her towards an Academy Award.

Due to give birth to her first child in a month, the Adelaide- born Lehman, 34, who lives in Sydney, said she was blown away by her win.

“I’ve always been here at Tropfest in the audience, but this is my first time I’ve made an entry,” she said.

There were six main players in the production of Marry Me, which cost about $5000 to make, Lehman said.

The film, described as a little love story, was inspired by Lehman’s childhood and her memory of chasing a boy around the schoolyard. “He never wanted to marry me … I’m glad about that now,” she said.

In a night dominated by good-humoured comedies and documentaries, Lehman’s film was judged best by a jury that included star actors Naomi Watts and Geoffrey Rush, and Lantana director Ray Lawrence.

Watts was making her first public appearance since the death of actor Heath Ledger, whom she dated for two years after they met on the set of Ned Kelly.

The Tropfest audience, which numbered in the thousands, watched a two-minute video tribute to Heath Ledger, created by festival founder John Polson.

Polson’s creation continues to grow with the addition of the Tropfest Junior short film festival this year and a couple of international entries among the crowd’s favourites, including the gross comedy from Japan, Scab, which won two awards including the popular Tropicana Cafe award.

It is the wild enthusiasm of kids such as inaugural winner Guy Verge Wallace, who says he can’t think of anything else he would rather do than make films, that has prompted the organisers of the burgeoning short-film festival to launch a junior version.

Tropfest Junior received 83 entries this year but organisers expect the numbers to rise to hundreds if not thousands within a few years. Even in its first year, it is already the world’s largest short-film festival for children.

As winner, 16-year-old Guy received $500 cash donated by the sponsors, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, a video camera and the opportunity to attend a major feature film in production.

Guy, who has been making films since he was 10, said: “I have done many, many films; I have been doing it for a long time. Making films is absolutely, definitely, what I want to do.”

His winning entry, Poor Joshua Verde, uses elaborate painted puppets and a sophisticated voiceover to tell the story of a young boy who loses his father and goes through a very dark period before finding happiness again. Guy made the film over a month whenever he had free time from school.