He is only just old enough to watch a movie without parental guidance, but 15-year-old Vincent Tempest is being tipped for the top as a film director.

The New Barnet youngster won a prestigious honour last week with his short film Thank You Sod's Law and is to enter his next, the thriller Snatcher, into a competition for young film-makers in Los Angeles.

"He's very good for a 15-year-old," said his mother, Catherine. "He attends the Finchley Cinevideo Club, and everybody there thinks he is the next big thing. He's certainly very talented."

Vincent claimed first prize at the 6th Peter Kittel Film & Video Competition 2005, with his comic tale of a peeping Tom who takes photographs of a sunbathing neighbour.

And he himself was the subject of some unwelcome attention recently, when motorists in Epping Forest reported him to police as they mistook his work on a film about an actor whose dead body is dumped in the forest for being a genuine murder.

A full-scale police search ensued before they found Vincent and the dumped body' a blow-up purple rubber alien wrapped in a bag.

The youthful film-maker, who attends Mill Hill School in The Ridgeway, now aims to have a close encounter with Tinseltown.

"He really admires Spielberg," said Catherine. "He's read everything about him. He's very well-read and completely self-taught. There's no reason why he can't go on to great things."