The creators of Game of Thrones will change the way they approach sexual violence in the upcoming sixth season of the popular television show, following fan backlash last year, one of the show's directors says.

Jeremy Podeswa — who will direct the first two episodes of season six — said creators David Benioff and DB Weiss had taken fan feedback on board.

Podeswa spoke at a Fox Studios Australia event in Sydney, where he said Benioff and Weiss "were responsive to the discussion and there were a couple of things that changed as a result".

"It is important that [the producers] not self-censor. The show depicts a brutal world where horrible things happen," he said.

"They did not want to be too overly influenced by that [criticism] but they did absorb and take it in, and it did influence them in a way."

Podeswa was the director behind last season's episode Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken, which featured a scene in which Sansa Stark was raped by Ramsay Bolton, with Theon Greyjoy forced to watch.

The particularly graphic scene — in a show known for its violent content — sparked a largely negative response.

Fans and critics slammed the inclusion of the rape scene — which happened to Jeyne Poole in the books, a character that Sansa Stark has co-opted in the television show — as gratuitous and cliched.

"Sansa has been through plenty already and using rape as female character development is a fantasy cliche that can so easily look crass," The Telegraph's Charlotte Runcie wrote at the time.

Sexually violent scenes defended as accurate depiction of war

While in Australia, Podeswa defended the rape scene.

"It was a difficult and brutal scene and we knew it was going to be challenging for the audience," he said.

"But it was very important to us in the execution that it would not be exploited in any way.

"To be fair, the criticism was the notion of it, not the execution. It was handled as sensitively as it could possibly be; you hardly see anything.

"I welcomed the discussion about the depiction of violence on television and how it could be used as a narrative tool sometimes and the questionable nature of that.

"We were aware ahead of time that it was going to be disturbing but we did not expect there would be people in Congress talking about it."

However, there was some criticism of the scene's execution, with fans and critics arguing the heavy focus on Theon Greyjoy's reaction to the rape made the scene more about his pain than Sansa Stark's.

Vanity Fair's Joanna Robinson wrote: "The last thing we needed was to have a powerful young woman brought low in order for a male character to find redemption."

Others, including Game of Thrones author George RR Martin, have also defended the inclusion of rape and sexual assault as an accurate depiction of war.

"The books reflect a patriarchal society based on the Middle Ages," Martin told Entertainment Weekly.

"The Middle Ages were not a time of sexual egalitarianism ... they had strong ideas about the roles of women."

Game of Thrones has previously been criticised for a non-consensual sex scene in season four, which was written as consensual in the books.