r The Piano Tuner
Daniel Roher, Canada, USA, 2025o
is lured into using his talent to crack combination locks without making a sound. While winning the heart of a young composer and using his newfound income to help his ailing boss out of trouble, he finds himself under increasing pressure from his criminal employers.
The most entertaining film of 2026? This heist movie straddling the line between thriller and comedy is definitely a contender. Heists are criminal feats of ingenuity, those elaborate, non-violent robberies that all of us underpaid souls occasionally dream of pulling off: Ocean’s Eleven, Inside Man and the like…
In Tuner, released here as The Piano Tuner, just such a dream falls into the lap of a young piano tuner named Niki. His boss has locked his hearing aid in the safe and misplaced the combination somewhere in his increasingly muddled mind. So Niki turns to YouTube to learn how to crack safes simply by listening. You see, the young man's hypersensitive hearing has cost him a promising career as a concert pianist.
As luck would have it, this man of few words manages to impress not only a beautiful young Asian composer with his newfound talent, but also a shady security crew busy cutting open a safe in a client's villa. Surely there's an easier way! The small-time crooks, led with menacing charm by Fauda star Lior Raz, could certainly use a fellow like Niki…
Sounds contrived? Of course it is, like all heist movies. But the writing, camerawork, editing and soundtrack, courtesy of a team led by up-and-coming director Daniel Roher (Navalny), display an ear for dialogue and music that rivals the hero's own. Irony and melancholy, dazzling cinematic craftsmanship and jazz intertwine in a crime caper crackling with erotic tension and danger.
Then there's 30-year-old British actor Leo Woodall as Niki, already impressive in the recent Nuremberg: irresistible in the way his slightly crumpled face shifts between arrogance and vulnerability. Equally delightful is 89-year-old Dustin Hoffman as his wonderfully eccentric, jazz-obsessed boss.
In the final act, the delicate balance between danger, violence and comedy occasionally threatens to unravel. But the outrageously over-the-top finale, with its deliciously deadpan punchline, sets everything right again: the world belongs to the audacious!
Andreas Furler