Wes Ball (’02)  

The visual effects wizard directs the Maze Runner franchise, whose third installment—The Death Cure—is due next year.

Kat Candler (’08)  

Her 2013 short Black Metal was a prize-winning festival favorite, leading to the writer-director’s feature debut Hellion (2014), starring Aaron Paul. More recently, Candler’s been directing Ava DuVernay’s series Queen Sugar on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

David Robert Mitchell (’02)

Mitchell shimmies between genres, with a suburban teen drama, The Myth of the American Sleepover (2011), and an inventive horror film, It Follows (2014), to his name. He now turns to contemporary film noir in the upcoming Under the Silver Lake.

Aaron Moorhead (’08)

Along with creative partner Justin Benson, the director and cinematographer has made two critically acclaimed horror films with sly comedic edges, Resolution (2012) and Spring (2014). In their latest film, The Endless, the pair take the leads as brothers who return to a mysterious death cult.

Amy Seimetz (’03) 

She’s been an MVP on the indie film scene for more than a decade, during which she appeared in dozens of films and helped produce many of them, as well. Seimetz broke out as a writer-director with 2012’s Sun Don’t Shine, a lovers-on-the-run thriller that gave South Florida its humid, dreamy due. She recently helmed the second season of The Girlfriend Experience for executive producer Steven Soderbergh and the Starz network.