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).

An alumnus of the University of Maryland, Bernard became notable as head of sales at United Artists Classics (1981–1983) where he first worked with long-time collaborator Michael Barker. 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". Looking back 30 years later, Bernard remembered "lots of big, fat, bald guys" in 1983 but now the class of people is "very, very different", "the only thing you can say is the same is they always have the best movies."