Podeswa was given two Genie Awards in 2000 as Best Director of The Five Senses, which was awarded Best Picture.
Jeremy Podeswa was born in 1962 in Toronto, Ontario. His father was a Polish Jewish Painter, and the only one of his immediate family to make it out of the German Nazi camps alive. Podeswa graduated from Ryerson University's Film Studies program and the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies (now the AFI Conservatory). He is openly gay.
He was part of a loosely affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave.
Podeswa was given two Genie Awards in 2000 as Best Director of The Five Senses, which was awarded Best Picture.
In 2014, he directed episodes five and six of the fifth season of the HBO series Game of Thrones, earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for the latter episode. He returned the next season, directing the season premiere and the second episode. He also directed the season premiere as well as the season finale of the seventh season.