Jared Leaf, from Alhambra High to Jordan Peele's first horror class

San Jose State's football roster puts it plainly: Jared Leaf, linebacker, senior, hometown Martinez, Calif., high school Alhambra High, Martinez, Calif., previous school the University of Hawai'i.

He directs now, and the roster line is not the usual first paragraph of a filmmaker's biography.

In 2024, Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw Productions, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Universal Filmmakers Project named Leaf one of five filmmakers in the first class of their No Drama Initiative. The program was built around one question Peele put to applicants: what is your biggest fear, and what monsters lurk in the deepest corners of your inner thoughts. Each of the five got a $50,000 grant from the festival to make a short film or a proof of concept, a year of workshops and access to studio executives. It opened with a four-day intensive on the Universal lot.

Leaf's answer was "Spilled Milk." His own production company, Ninety Third Story, describes it as a short about what happened to all those deadbeat dads who went to the store for milk and never came back: a Black father's errand turns into an encounter with a mysterious Milk Man, and things go sour.

It has travelled a long way for a short. The film world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short at the Pan African Film Festival, and won the HBO Short Film Award Showcase at the American Black Film Festival.

The route there ran through Portland, not Hollywood. The festival's own biography of Leaf describes a classically trained actor and former college linebacker who moved from Los Angeles to Portland in 2021 and directed work for Nike, including documentaries on Serena Williams and the five-part series "Decolonizing Design." He has made eight short films since 2018 across romantic comedy, noir, action, comedy and horror. His first horror short, "Sketch," won an award and drew three nominations.

He has been working in television alongside it. Leaf directed all 10 episodes of the second season of the BET+ workplace comedy "Churchy," which premiered Aug. 21, 2025.

What happens to "Spilled Milk" next is partly out of his hands. Under the terms of the No Drama Initiative, Universal and Monkeypaw hold an exclusive option to buy the projects once the program ends.