Michèle Maheux was born in Toronto and raised in Montreal, Stamford,
CT, and Toronto. She studied journalism at Carleton University until
the day she was assigned to review Denys Arcand’s Réjeanne Padovani for
a French class and was inspired to switch her degree to film. She has
thirty years’ experience working in the film industry in distribution,
exhibition, promotion, marketing, publicity and corporate
communications. She joined TIFF in 1989, led communications efforts for
the organization for ten years, and became Managing Director in 1998.
Today, as Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, she
spearheads the project to build Bell Lightbox. She takes great delight
in bringing a handful of films to TIFF each year and now thrills in
rediscovering the power of film through the eyes of her two young
children. TIFF08 marks her thirty-second Festival – twenty of them from
the inside.