Tuner

Having acutely sensitive hearing is both a blessing and a curse for Niki White as played by Leo Woodall in Daniel Roher’s first narrative feature. Though his auditory condition ended a promising musical career, it’s been a boon for his job as a piano tuner. Together with his genial mentor Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), he spends his days travelling back and forth across New York, tending to instruments that require his special skills. These duties also compel the typically taciturn Niki to come out of his protective shell and interact with such people as Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a music composition student with whom he feels a spark. But when shady individuals discover that Niki’s talents could be just as useful on locked safes as they are on old Steinways, events take a dangerous turn, one that adds the thrills of watching a heist flick to a film that’s already remarkably fleet-footed as a drama and a romance.

Indeed, Tuner marks a confident shift toward narrative filmmaking for Roher, whose previous efforts include the documentaries Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band, which opened the Festival in 2019, and Navalny, for which the director won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film in 2023.

Written by Roher and Robert Ramsey, the whip-smart script also serves as a convincing demonstration of Woodall’s leading-man mettle. The chemistry he develops with Liu becomes one of the film’s great pleasures, as do the equally terrific turns by the cast’s screen veterans, with Hoffman, Tovah Feldshuh, and Jean Reno all helping ensure Roher’s thriller maintains its perfect pitch.

JASON ANDERSON

Content advisory: coarse language, bullying, sexual innuendo, strobing effects, violence