Sightlines · reception

How Tuner was received

2026 · Daniel Roher · Tuner on Sightlines

Where it stands

Too new for canon status, but it landed as one of 2026's word-of-mouth crowd-pleasers — the 'far better than it sounds' indie that premiered at Telluride 2025.

Did you know? Roher — fresh off winning the Best Documentary Oscar for Navalny — got the idea during a post-Oscar creative slump while shadowing a real Los Angeles piano tuner, who assured him the safecracking angle wasn't far-fetched: plenty of his peers moonlight as locksmiths.

Named by the director

• The Conversation (1974) — Roher cited Coppola's film as a model for the kind of sound-forward cinema he wanted Tuner to be.
• Blow Out (1981) — Named by Roher among the great 'sound movies' he drew on, where sound is as important as a character.
• Sound of Metal (2019) — Roher pointed to Darius Marder's film as a recent touchstone for making the audience hear the movie as much as see it.