This year, 45% of the gala films debuting at TIFF are directed by women (36% of films overall) — the highest percentage in the festival’s 44-year history. Major credit for this goes to Joana Vicente , who was named TIFF’s co-head and executive director last year. (It’s also worth noting that TIFF achieved gender parity with their programmers this year.) With producing credits on more than 40 films and an Oscar nomination for the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Vicente comes to TIFF with a stacked resume. The fact that she is a woman in the most powerful role you can hold at an international festival is not lost on her. "I hope I am impacting [TIFF’s representation of women], but there is still a lot of work to do," she says. "If you look at a film school, usually half of the class is made of women, so there is a drop we’re seeing." Of the top 100 grossing films of 2018, women represented just 4% of directors . "We are holding ourselves accountable and doing what we can to make progress happen," Vicente adds. That means nurturing and finding up-and-coming filmmakers, like those working on short films , which are often young artists’ entry points into the industry.