Jennifer Podemski

Acting

Jennifer Podemski

Born 1974-01-01 · Toronto, Canada

Jennifer Podemski is an award winning Film and Television Producer and Actor born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Of mixed First Nations and Israeli descent, Jennifer began her acting career as a teen. Her career blossomed when she was cast as Pique in CBC's The Diviners followed by a starring role in Bruce McDonald's Dance Me Outside. As her career in front of the camera exploded, Jennifer began to notice the inequity behind the lens. Although all of the roles she was awarded as actor were First Nations characters, she rarely, if ever, saw any First Nations writers, producers or directors. By 25, with a solid career under her belt, Jennifer opened her first production company, Big Soul Productions (BSP) with fellow burgeoning producer Laura Milliken. BSP became the first Aboriginal owned and operated, full service production company in Canada, producing hundreds of hours of television including three seasons of the award winning Dramatic Series Moccasin Flats for Showcase and APTN. In 2005, Jennifer branched out on her own and founded Redcloud Studios, Inc. Although Jennifer has maintained a successful career as an actor, with roles in Degrassi, Republic of Doyle, Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz and Jimmy P alongside Benicio Del Toro, she is most proud of her starring role in her own film Empire of Dirt for which she was nominated for two Canadian Screen Awards for Best Actress in a Supporting Role as well as Best Feature Film for her work as producer. Empire of Dirt premiered at TIFF 2014 and continued to a theatrical release in Canada and traveled the world on the film festival circuit. Jennifer is also the creator and producer of APTN's famed paranormal series The Other Side, currently shooting it's second season; in her 9th year as Co-Executive Producer and Creative Director of the Indspire Awards (Global, APTN) for which she was nominated for Best Lifestyle Television Show at the 2014 CSA's. More recently, Jennifer can be seen as Dr. Crowshoe on the award winning drama series Blackstone; HBO's Sensitive Skin with Kim Catrall and in FireSong, written and directed by Adam Garnett Jones. A storyteller behind and in front of the camera, Jennifer still makes time for training aboriginal youth in film and tv, mentoring and holding self esteem workshops across the US and Canada.

Acting credits

Bogus poster
5.8

Recently orphaned, a young boy is taken in by his godmother who is shocked to realize that she can see the boy's imaginary friend: a flamboyant, French magician named Bogus.

Bogus

1996

Take This Waltz poster
6.4

Twenty-eight-year-old Margot is happily married to Lou, a good-natured cookbook author. But when Margot meets Daniel, a handsome artist who lives across the street, their mutual attraction is undeniable.

Take This Waltz

2011

Jimmy P. poster
6.1

At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.

Jimmy P.

2013

Nika & Madison poster
NR

Fearing they won't be believed, two young Indigenous women go on the run after one's defense of the other results in a violent attack against a police officer.

Nika & Madison

2026

Empire of Dirt poster
5.3

Lena flees to her rural hometown after her 13-year-old daughter's overdose attracts the attention of child services. She reunites with her estranged mother, and is forced to face a past she has tried to ignore.

Empire of Dirt

2013

The Diviners poster
8.0

Morag Gunn, a writer who is having trouble with her teenage daughter, examines her own relationship history, which includes a period of turbulence with Jules. While she and Jules have known each other since childhood, he is no rock of stability. In addition, he is white, while she is part Native American, so the teenage Morag experienced racism he can only imagine. Even after they have a daughter, she struggles against the emptiness within her.

The Diviners

1993

Fugitive Pieces poster
6.2

A child escapes from Poland during World War II and first heads to Greece before coming of age in Canada.

Fugitive Pieces

2008

Akilla's Escape poster
4.4

In a crime-noir about the urban child-soldier, Akilla Brown captures a fifteen-year-old Jamaican boy in the aftermath of an armed robbery. Over one gruelling night, Akilla confronts a cycle of generational violence he thought he escaped.

Akilla's Escape

2021

Redlights poster
NR

An evening outing takes a dangerous turn for two Indigenous women.

Redlights

2023

Rehab poster
NR

A First Nations man takes a famous actor back to the reserve to help him cope with his drug addiction.

Rehab

2022

No artwork available
NR

Phil and Jay share more than a family bond - failed careers, failed relationships, bottomless drinks, and a debilitating memory of a shocking encounter in a ravine one childhood day. The pretext of being strangers, the darkly comic ritual that the broken, non-functioning brothers perform in an attempt to get at their pain, can't cover the palpable connection between them, nor their deeply felt desire to find redemption. An accomplished pianist, Jay is working as a piano player in a lounge. Mike, one of the bar's patrons, makes a request for Jay to play Maurice Ravel's "Pavane pour une infant defunte", which Jay refuses. This act masks an underlying secret both men share about their childhood.

Pavane

2008

The Robber Bride poster
4.8

Journalist Zenia Arden has disappeared. When her finger turns up on the shores of Lake Ontario next to her blood-soaked car, the police believe they've uncovered a homicide.

The Robber Bride

2007

No artwork available
5.0

A black comedy, Don't Think Twice is a disturbing and profound examination of the morals of a man forced to choose between lover and family.

Don't Think Twice

1999

Mouthpiece poster
5.2

Based on a stage play of the same name by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, the story follows Cassandra, who is portrayed by the two women, expressing the opposing voices that exist inside the modern woman's head, during a 48-hour period as she tries to organize the affairs for her mother's funeral.

Mouthpiece

2019

Dance Me Outside poster
6.6

Explores the sensitive, and tense, relationship between life on an First Nations reservation and life in the outside world. When Native Canadian Silas Crow is forced to write a personal essay in order to get a much-desired job, he tells the story of the rape and murder of an Indian girl by a drunken thug. When the killer received a lenient two-year sentence for manslaughter, the First Nations community felt shock and anger—and tried desperately to deal with the after-effects of this lack of justice.

Dance Me Outside

1995

No artwork available
3.5

Tells the story of the realities faced by women in the film and TV industry yet simultaneously depicts the necessary, possible and achievable ways to transform them. The story is set in common TV backdrops – from a police procedural to a sitcom (complete with laugh track), to a medical drama, to a webisode series.

Reel Women Seen

2017

Aberdeen poster
8.3

An idyllic childhood with her mooshum and kookum, or grandparents, in her community of Peguis First Nation dissipates as Aberdeen’s hard-partying and absentee parents distances her from that haven. Now an adult, sleeping on public benches, Winnipeg-based Aberdeen is in survival mode. The last remaining stable parts of her life begin slipping away — her reliable brother Boyd is ill and gives up Aberdeen’s grandkids to the foster care system. Then she loses her ID.

Aberdeen

2024

The Light Before the Sun poster
NR

A famous self-help guru returns from a book tour to a house suddenly filled with an estranged friend. The two friends then spiral into a drug-induced contemplation of the human condition.

The Light Before the Sun

2024

Fire Song poster
5.3

Shane, a gay Anishnabe teenager in Northern Ontario, is struggling to support his family in the aftermath of his sister's suicide. If he fails, he will be forced to choose between his family's home and his own future.

Fire Song

2015

Distant Drumming: A North of 60 Mystery poster
8.0

Teevee Tenia has a plan - he intends to persuade Lynx River to dump the RCMP and establish an all Dene Police Force. But Corporal Michelle Kenidi is concerned: will a Dene Police Force in Lynx River be answerable to Canadian law, or to Teevee? When an elderly tourist is found beaten to death, Michelle’s concerns deepen as her suspicions fall upon Teevee’s friend, Matthew Fowler. As Michelle pursues the investigation, painful events from the past come alive. For the community of Lynx River, the investigation holds the town’s very future at stake.

Distant Drumming: A North of 60 Mystery

2005

Bliss - Erotische Versuchungen poster
4.0

No synopsis available yet.

Bliss - Erotische Versuchungen

2002

Heritage Minutes: Tommy Prince poster
NR

A eulogy is given for Tommy Prince, Canada’s most-decorated Indigenous war veteran.

Heritage Minutes: Tommy Prince

2005

Behind the camera