Tuner
When a piano tuner’s extraordinary hearing reveals a knack for cracking safes, his quiet New York routine gives way to a risky life of crime—just as the possibility of love suggests another future. Dustin Hoffman and Leo Woodall star.
Description
Academy Award®–winning director Daniel Roher (Navalny, Festival 2022) makes a striking leap into narrative filmmaking with this stylish, genre-bending thriller. Leo Woodall plays Niki, a meticulous piano tuner whose hypersensitive hearing makes the world painfully loud—but also gives him an uncanny ability to detect the inner workings of locks. His quiet life tuning pianos across New York alongside his mentor, played with wry warmth by Dustin Hoffman, takes an unexpected turn when Niki’s rare talent draws the attention of criminals eager to exploit it. As he becomes entangled in increasingly dangerous safecracking jobs, a tentative romance with a music student (Havana Rose Liu) presents another path. Propelled by inventive sound design and sharp performances, Tuner blends crime caper, romance, and character study into a tense, darkly funny exploration of talent, temptation, and the fragile line between survival and self-destruction. —Jessie Fairbanks
Biographies
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Daniel Roher makes his narrative feature debut with Tuner. He began his career making short films, among them, Kids of the Rocket Siren (2013), Conversations with a Dead Prime Minister (2015), and Sourtoe: The Story of the Sorry Cannibal (2016). He made his feature documentary debut with Once Were Brothers (2019), followed by Best Documentary Oscar® winner Navalny (Festival 2022) and The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (2026).
