VIFF 2025 | Leo Woodall Cracks the Right 'Tuner'

"It's not about hearing. It's about feeling."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2025—Oscar-winning Canadian documentary filmmaker Daniel Roher makes his narrative feature debut in the entertaining, piano-themed heist drama, Tuner. It stars English actor Leo Woodall as the titular piano tuner with a sensitive hearing condition that both makes him an unusually talented safe cracker while rendering him incapable of playing his instrument of choice.

Roher's assuredly confident direction makes the dramatic material about artistry, theft, and romance wrapped in classical piano music often grippingly thrilling. Havana Rose Liu and Dustin Hoffman as Woodall's love interest and adoptive grandfather figure allow for his quietly stoic prodigy character to still be dynamic without much in the way of exposition or dialogue.

At its heart, Tuner is a film about the reward of doing everyday work competently with an added criminal element to dial up the excitement. Its New York City setting (shot in Toronto) only heightens the dramatic aspects of its well-drawn characters. Roher and Woodall prove their bona fides as a conventional film director and lead actor more than ably. It's a crackling, engrossing heist movie that's well-acted, directed, and executed.

Tuner screened at the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations series at the Rio Theatre.


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