At Sundance 2024, Berney, who currently runs indie distributor Picturehouse with his wife Jeanne, caught Ukraine documentary “Porcelain War,” and months later raised financing for a fall release and Oscar campaign that yielded an eventual 2025 Best Documentary Feature nomination.
This is what Berney does: He spots a diamond in the rough and figures out how to get it to audiences. And there’s no better place to accomplish that than Sundance. If you count movies Berney consulted on, acquired, or released, he’s screened some 33 films at the festival. And yes, he did get into some intense bidding wars.
Over the decades, trying to bring a film to Sundance or buy a festival title became Berney’s “whole career,” he said on Zoom. “Those early days were the first times that the sales agents realized, ‘Oh, this is the opportunity to actually sell a movie.’ Sales agents like Cassian Elwes started the whole process of the market, special screenings, late-night fights, people actually slugging it out.”
One year, a gaggle of festival attendees — including the late indie distributor Bingham Ray — wound up throwing snowballs on Main Street. Alcohol may have been involved. “That was the competitive nature of it all,” said Berney. “It was pretty macho. It started to get like: ‘You’re going to win, you’re going to get the movie, whatever the movie is.’”
At first, Berney attended as an exhibitor, checking out films to book at his arthouse, the Inwood Theatre in Dallas, Texas. All along, the festival has been “a location: the weather, the snow, the skiing,” he said. “It’s more than just screenings. Redford was obviously a skier and made movies about skiing, but that was part of it.”
One year, when Berney was consulting for Redford, they went skiing at his Sundance ski resort. They were “talking about how to distribute films that didn’t get acquired,” said Berney, who learned that Redford’s cinephilia dated back to his youth attending the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, where he grew up. “And he always wanted movie theaters.”
In 1985, Berney was consulting for FilmDallas, which invested in Sundance breakout “The Trip to Bountiful,” his debut Sundance entry. Shep Gordon’s Island Alive picked up the film and took it to an Oscar win for Geraldine Page. After Berney joined the distribution ranks at Triton Pictures, he brought to Sundance Errol Morris’ Stephen Hawking documentary “A Brief History of Time,” which won the 1991 Documentary Grand Jury Prize.
Talent discovery was always a major aspect of the festival, such as Alexander Rockwell’s low-budget indie “In the Soup” (Triton, 1992), which broke out Steve Buscemi. Back then, everyone had to wait until the festival to check out the films. Nobody had seen anything. “It wasn’t like you knew everything about them already, or figured out what you were going to buy ahead of time,” said Berney. “You couldn’t look up information about these films. This was all about discovering a film or talent or a new director. And you had no idea what you were going to see.”
“I Shot Andy Warhol” (Orion) was a breakout for filmmaker Mary Harron. “But it was very small,” said Berney. “It was not still, yet, a business. It was still developing.” But she launched her directing career.
Berney always kept his hand in consulting and checking out movies. One discovery was Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” (2001). “‘Memento’ was a completed, finished film that I screened,” said Berney. “I said, ‘Why are you showing this to me?’ And they go, ‘Because everyone passed.’ No distributors anywhere in the world wanted to make an offer on ‘Memento.”
So Berney told them to raise the marketing money, and he’d release it via Newmarket Films’ theatrical distribution arm, which he founded. “Newmarket were bankers, and they did,” he said. The movie scored at the indie box office ($40 million worldwide) and landed two Oscar nominations for Original Screenplay and Editing. In 2024, Sundance held a tribute to Christopher Nolan at the gala. The director thanked Berney for bringing it to the festival, with Guy Pearce and Joe Pantoliano on hand. “It had been in some other festivals,” said Berney, “but at Sundance, it just took off.”
Berney will also never forget the Sundance reaction to Alfonso Cuarón’s sexy “Y Tu Mamá También” (2001, IFC Films). “Alfonso had gone back to make a personal film after his Hollywood experience [‘Great Expectations,’ ‘The Little Princess’],” he said. “The guy that produced it was like the Herbalife king of Mexico, and we didn’t know how it was going to all work out. We saw it from a promo reel at Cannes, and no one would take it because they thought it would be either X or NC-17. We just went unrated and blew that up. It was such a sweet film, but it also became a hot date night movie. Not only women loved the cast, but they would go with their dates.”
Walking the streets at Sundance with Mexican stars Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal “was incredible,” said Berney. “They were so funny and clever. They knew exactly how to work the room. And it’s amazing what they’ve done, both of them.”
One of Berney’s big Sundance buys was “Donnie Darko” (2001). “That was a classic thing, where the Hollywood executives and the acquisitions people did not get that movie,” he said. “There were no offers. Not only no offers; people just walked out. Some were talking about it, but no one knew what to do. And we bought it at Newmarket in March or April. And we worked with Richard Kelly, and they made some cuts, a little bit of an adjustment, not that much. And then it was so horrific, because we released it in September 2001. But then it went on and found the younger audience. That film was a lightning rod. It ended up being one of the biggest home entertainment releases ever. We did $30 million on VHS.”
In a theatrical experiment, HBO Films sent “Real Women Have Curves” to Sundance 2002, where it became a breakout for America Ferrera. Newmarket released it for HBO Films. Later on, Newmarket was sold to HBO and New Line Cinema, which became the first iteration of the Picturehouse label.
In 2003, Susanne Bier’s Oscar contender “Open Hearts” (Newmarket) played the Prospector at Sundance. “The platter system is not reel to reel,” said Berney. “It’s all put together, right? If you screw up, that’s it. We start the movie and go get a coffee, and we get a call. ‘Reels four and five are switched.’ And so we had to stop the film, and there’s nothing we can do. So we ran over there. Bier told the crowd, “We’ll just have to reschedule it.’”
The audience stood up and said, “No, we have to know what happens. We cannot, can’t wait. So we’ll just watch it wrong, and we’ll figure it out.” And so they did.
That same year, Newmarket brought to Sundance “Whale Rider,” which they had acquired at the end of the Toronto Film Festival when many buyers had gone home. “It had this emotion that some people originally didn’t understand,” said Berney, “because it’s a bit of a slow burn at the beginning. Most distributors walked out; they didn’t stay for the end, when it was a standing ovation of crying people. When it played to 400 people at the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake City, where there was a sizable Maori community, one of the old reel-to-reel projectors fell apart. The audience was chanting. So they projected the film one reel at a time.” “Whale Rider” won the Audience Award. And Keisha Castle-Hughes went on to land a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
For the Joan Jett rock biopic “The Runaways” (Apparition), the Berneys brought in young star Kristen Stewart, who was underage for drinking in Utah. They had to get the police to escort her into the after-party, where the band The Runaways performed.
When Berney moved over to run film distribution at Amazon, he insisted that theatrical was primary. That’s how he won the bidding war for Kenneth Lonergan’s tragic family drama “Manchester by the Sea,” which became an instant Oscar contender for the filmmaker, Michelle Williams, and Casey Affleck.
“The sales agents and the filmmakers, they were highly suspect of Amazon,” said Berney. “They had no idea that we were going to do actual theatrical releases, full-on traditional. We could pay, right? We could make a big MG (minimum guarantee) because we’re Amazon, but they didn’t believe that we were going to release the film, and so it’s my job, particularly, to acquire the film and convince Kenny Lonergan. I had to do big pitches for the filmmakers and the agents how I would do it, and also that I thought it would play outside New York. And it would be a film that we would support and try and go through the middle of the country with. It ended up that it worked that way. I had the same kind of pitch later on ‘The Big Sick.’”
One year, Berney wound up shepherding Joaquin Phoenix on his first Sundance foray. Phoenix told Berney, “I don’t like it. The other thing, I don’t like snow.” Berney reminded him that he was there with two films (Gus Van Sant’s “Don’t Worry, You Won’t Get Far on Foot” and Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here”). “He had a reputation of ‘you don’t need to do publicity, you just do the work,’” said Berney. “‘But you know what? You have to because, Lynne and Gus kill themselves to make these movies.’”
“No, I’m just kidding,” said Phoenix. “I’m all in.”
One goal for the Berneys and Picturehouse at Sundance 2026 “is to be part of the final Park City, to experience it and tell stories and meet people,” said Berney. “The other is to look at films and to see if there’s something that makes sense for us to work on. We’re not like the high bidder, but we can use our experience, and some people go for it. The plan of a lot of producers now is raising marketing money, because there’s so many good films that don’t get distributors.”
As Sundance moves through its bittersweet Park City finale, the festival, like the independent film market at large, has lost some luster. What needs to happen as it moves to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027?
“They definitely wanted less of the big studio films and less Hollywood involvement,” said Berney, “to go back to the roots of pure independent films to some degree. Some would argue that they went super woke. That, on top of the pandemic and the collapse of the theatrical market, meant fewer films that provided bidding wars. It’s less of a marketplace, which is the more pure version of Sundance, which Redford wanted. But it can totally come back.”
