Tom Bernard

Tom Bernard is an American film distributor specializing in art cinema and is one of the co-founders of Sony Pictures Classics (SPC). [1] Bernard and fellow Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker have worked together for approximately four decades and have won 39 Oscars.Variety

An alumnus of the University of Maryland,[2] Bernard was hired in 1981 by Nathaniel Troy Kwit Jr. to revamp the United Artists repertory division into the first modern-day specialized distribution company, then called United Artists Classics (1981–1983) He served as Division Director and Head of Sales until 1983. That is where he first worked with long-time collaborator Michael Barker.[3] Bernard and Barker left UA to create Orion Classics in February 1983. They attended the Cannes Film Festival hoping to buy their first title and picked up Eric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach when they were "in a desperate position".[3] Looking back 30 years later, Bernard remembered the class of people was "very, very different then", "the only thing you can say is the same is they always have the best movies."[4]

Bernard is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the Sundance Advisory Board, the Tribeca Film Festival Advisory Board and the Monmouth University Communication Board.[5]

Bernard has "...distributed more Oscar winners than any other company in history when it comes to two categories: best documentary feature (1995’s Anne Frank Remembered, 1999’s One Day in September, 2003’s The Fog of War, 2010’s Inside Job and 2012’s Searching for Sugar Man) and best foreign language film (1992’s Indochine, 1993’s Belle Epoque, 1994’s Burnt by the Sun, 1997’s Character, 1999’s All About My Mother, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2006’s The Lives of Others, 2007’s The Counterfeiters, 2009’s The Secret in Their Eyes, 2010’s In a Better World, 2011’s A Separation, Amour and 2015’s Son of Saul."[6]