Don Bernier

Don Bernier, ACE, is an award-winning and Emmy-nominated documentary film editor who has worked on experimental, historical and verité features, series, and shorts. He got his start in the edit rooms of Insignia Films and David Grubin Productions in New York City. Most recently, he edited the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award-winning and Emmy-nominated Life After (Independent Lens/PBS), an investigative documentary that exposes the moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying in the disabled community. Bernier’s editing credits also include Athlete A (Netflix), which won a 2021 Emmy award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and earned Don a Critic’s Choice Documentary Award nomination for Best Editing; Always in Season (Independent Lens/PBS), which won a Special Jury Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival; the Emmy-nominated Charm City (Independent Lens/PBS), which was shortlisted for a 2019 Academy Award; Participant Media’s Oscar shortlisted and BAFTA nominated An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Paramount Pictures), which opened the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and premiered internationally at the Cannes Film Festival; the Peabody Award winning Audrie & Daisy (Netflix), which had its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival; The Genius of Marian (POV/PBS), which premiered at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival; and the Peabody Award winning bio, Eames: The Architect and the Painter (American Masters/PBS). Bernier also works regularly as an editorial consultant, contributing to films such as Pray Away, In the Same Breath and A Life Illuminated. He is a two-time Sundance Institute Documentary Edit and Story Lab Fellow, and has served as a mentor for The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship, BAVC‘s MediaMaker program, Chicken & Egg, the Catapult/True False Rough Cut Retreat, and the SFFILM Makers Creative Advisory Board. In 2017, Don was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Documentary Branch. He is also an active member of American Cinema Editors (ACE) since 2022.