Jennifer Podemski

Jennifer Podemski, actor, producer, writer, director (born 3 May 1973 in Toronto, ON). Jennifer Podemski established herself as an actor in Bruce McDonald’s Dance Me Outside (1994) and CBC’s The Rez (1996–97). She then became one of the leading Indigenous film and television producers in Canada. At the 2023 Canadian Screen Awards, she received the Academy Board of Directors’ Tribute Award in recognition of “her extraordinary impact on the growth of the Canadian media industry.”

Early Life and Family

Jennifer Podemski was born and raised in Toronto, the oldest of three daughters. Her father was an Ashkenazi Jew whose parents came to Canada from Poland after the Second World War. Her mother is Anishinaabe, Lenni Lenape and Métis. Podemski has said that she is from “a long line of powerful leaders, advocates and medicine people” on her mother’s side and “musicians, entrepreneurs and artists who were persecuted, dehumanized and sent to concentration camps” on her father’s side. Her younger sisters, Tamara and Sarah Podemski, are also both successful actors.

Early Career

Jennifer Podemski wanted to be a performer since she was in Grade 3. By Grade 6, she was actively involved in drama at her local synagogue. She started to pursue acting as a career at age 17. By 20, she had co-starred as the fiercely independent Métis girl Pique in Anne Wheeler’s 1993 adaptation of the Margaret Laurence novel The Diviners (1974). It won a Gemini Award for Best TV Movie.

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Jennifer Podemski
Actor-producer Jennifer Podemski of Empire of Dirt speaks onstage at the First Peoples Cinema Press Conference during the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox, 6 September 2013.
(photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez, courtesy Getty Images)

Podemski followed that with her breakthrough role in Bruce McDonald’s Dance Me Outside (1994), co-starring Adam Beach and Michael Greyeyes. Adapted from the short story collection by W.P. Kinsella, it went on to be named Best Film at the 1995 American Indian Film Festival. Podemski then co-starred in a spinoff series on CBC called The Rez (1996–97). It earned her a Gemini Award nomination for best lead actress in a drama.

Frustrated by the lack of representation for Indigenous people in Canadian film and television, Podemski co-founded Big Soul Productions with Laura Milliken in 1999. They produced the award-winning short film Moccasin Flats (2003), which then became a drama series on APTN (2003–06) co-starring Gordon Tootoosis, Tantoo Cardinal and Sarah Podemski. It was nominated for a 2006 Gemini Award for Best Dramatic Series.

In 2005, Podemski founded her own film production company, Redcloud Studios. Through it, she has produced the award-winning feature film Empire of Dirt (2013), starring Cara Gee, the paranormal doc series The Other Side (2014–18), the APTN Indigenous culture series Future History (2018–19), and the Crave/APTN miniseries Little Bird (2023), about the Sixties Scoop. She has also produced several of the annual Indspire Awards galas.

Podemski also continued acting, appearing in such TV series as This Is Wonderland, Moose TV, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Republic of Doyle, Blackstone, Hard Rock Medical, Cardinal, Departure and Reservation Dogs. She appeared in a Heritage Minute about war hero Tommy Prince and such movies as Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces (2007), Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz (2011), Patricia Rozema’s Mouthpiece (2018) and Charles Officer’s Akilla’s Escape (2020).

Other Activities

In 2020, Jennifer Podemski established The Shine Network Institute (TSNI). Funded by the Department for Women and Gender Equality (WAGE), TSNI works with the National Screen Institute to provide professional development and mentorship programs to Indigenous women in Canadian media.

Awards

Best Actress (The Rez), American Indian Movie Awards (1997)
Best Canadian Feature Film – Special Jury Citation (Empire of Dirt), Toronto International Film Festival (2013)
Award of Excellence, ACTRA Awards (2018)
Best Direction, Factual (Future History), Canadian Screen Awards (2020)
Academy Board of Directors’ Tribute Award, Canadian Screen Awards (2023)