Described as “the gold standard of reissue distributors” by Los Angeles Times/NPR film critic Kenneth Turan, Rialto Pictures was founded in 1997 by Bruce Goldstein. A year later, Adrienne Halpern joined him as partner. In 2002, Eric Di Bernardo became the company’s National Sales Director.

Rialto’s past releases have included Renoir’s Grand Illusion; Carol Reed’s The Third Man; Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria; Jules Dassin’s Rififi; De Sica’s Umberto D; Godard’s Contempt, Band of Outsiders, Masculine Feminine and A Woman is a Woman; Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko; Buñuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Diary of a Chambermaid, The Phantom of Liberty, The Milky Way and That Obscure Object of Desire; John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar; Clouzot’s Quai des Orfèvres; Mike Nichols’ The Graduate; The Maysles’ Grey Gardens; Mel Brooks’ The Producers; Jacques Becker’s Touchez Pas Au Grisbi; Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar; Franju’s Eyes Without A Face; and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur and Le Cercle Rouge, the latter released for the first time in its uncut European version.
 
In 2002, the company released the critically-acclaimed first-run film Murderous Maids, the chilling true story of two homicidal sisters, starring Sylvie Testud.

Rialto celebrated a record-breaking 2004 with the previously unreleased, original 1954 Japanese version of Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla; Peter Davis’s Oscar-winning and newly-restored 1974 documentary Hearts and Minds; and Gillo Pontecorvo’s groundbreaking The Battle of Algiers, which became one of the year’s top-grossing foreign films.

In 2006, Rialto released Melville’s 1969 epic masterpiece Army of Shadows for the very first time in the United States. Army of Shadows became the most critically acclaimed film of last year, topping many Ten Best lists, including those in The New York Times and Premiere, and was named Best Foreign Film of 2006 by the New York Film Critics’ Circle, in addition to receiving special awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics and National Film Critics associations

Rialto’s re-release of Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso, a dark comedy from 1962 starring Alberto Sordi, was the unqualified highlight of the 2006 New York Film Festival. 
 
2007 re-releases included Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean-Jacques Beineix's "second wave" thriller Diva. 
 
In 1999, Rialto received a special Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics, and in 2000 received a special award from the New York Film Critic’s Circle, presented to Goldstein and Halpern by Jeanne Moreau. The two co-presidents have each received the French Order of Chevalier of Arts and Letters.

2007 marked Rialto’s tenth anniversary, a milestone that was celebrated with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Similar tributes were held at George Eastman House, in Rochester, New York;  the AFI Silver Theater in Washington, D.C.;  and the SIFF Theater in Seattle.
 
Rialto is currently enjoying a phenomenal success with Alain Resnais’s 1962 arthouse classic Last Year at Marienbad, which is creating the same kind of buzz it had over 45 years ago. This year, the company is also re-releasing Robert Hamer’s rediscovered masterwork of “Brit Noir,” It Always Rains on Sunday.