The feature film is directed by Daniel Roher, who won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2023 for Navalny.

Blending romance, drama, and the suspense of a crime thriller, Tuner follows Niki, a gifted piano tuner whose extraordinary hearing allows him not only to tune a Steinway to perfection, but also to crack safes. His unusual talent soon attracts the attention of a criminal network, drawing him into an increasingly dangerous world.

A former piano prodigy forced to abandon his promising musical career, Niki finds comfort in working alongside his mentor, Harry. His life takes an unexpected turn when he meets Ruthie, a composition student with whom he develops a deep connection. As their relationship grows, Niki’s secret life as a safecracker threatens to destroy everything he has begun to build.

“It’s a genuine pleasure to watch Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman in Tuner, a relaxed and effortlessly engaging drama that combines romantic-comedy beats with a laid-back crime thriller,” wrote The Guardian in its review of the film.

Alongside Woodall — known for his performances in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Nuremberg, and The White Lotus — and two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman, audiences will also see Tony Award-winning actress Tovah Feldshuh, as well as Havana Rose Liu, Lior Raz, and Jean Reno.

Writing for Empire, critic Harry Stainer described Tuner as the film that firmly establishes Leo Woodall as a leading man, “proving beyond doubt that he is ready to carry a feature film.” Stainer also praised the film’s remarkable sound design: “No movie since Whiplash has made audiences listen so closely to every note, key, and click. Roher turns sound into something almost tactile, whether we are watching a piano performance or hearing Niki decode the intricate mechanisms of a safe.”

Meanwhile, Henry K. Miller wrote for BFI that “Tuner is one of the most beautifully shot love stories in recent memory. Daniel Roher’s neo-noir finds a surprising harmony between romance and action.”

The film had its first Romanian screenings at the American Independent Film Festival and is already playing in preview screenings in selected cinemas ahead of its nationwide release.

Tuner opens in Romanian cinemas on June 19 and is distributed by Prorom and CAY Films.

For the first time in the history of the festival and Bran Castle, AIFF 8 organizes special screenings on June 7 and 8, in the castle courtyard.
The proposal of AIFF 8 is to reconnect the Romanian public, but also potential foreign tourists, with the beauty of the open-air cinema, accentuated by the unique setting and the breathtaking atmosphere of one of the most beautiful places in Romania.

"AIFF 8 continues its mission to offer the Romanian public films that are more than just entertainment, to mediate the dialogue of the public with the filmmakers, to cultivate the experience of watching cinema films as a social event, in the middle of the community and to use the cinema as an opportunity to connect and communicate with others, including by popularizing some social causes to which the festival donates, as every year, the proceeds from ticket sales.", says Cristian Mungiu, director of AIFF.

The Prorom title Hit Man (directed by Richard Linklater) will open the festival, on Friday, June 07, both at Cinema Elvire Popesco in Bucharest and outdoors, in the courtyard of Bran Castle.

Richard Linklater, one of the most important contemporary American directors is known to the public, among others, for the series Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) and for the ambitious film project Boyhood (2014) filmed throughout 12 years.

Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater's sunlit neo-noir stars Glen Powell as strait-laced professor Gary Johnson, who moonlights as a fake hit man for the New Orleans Police Department.

Preternaturally gifted at inhabiting different guises and personalities to catch hapless people hoping to bump off their enemies, Gary descends into morally dubious territory when he finds himself attracted to one of those potential criminals, a beautiful young woman named Madison (Adria Arjona).

As Madison falls for one of Gary's hit man personas -- the mysteriously sexy Ron -- their steamy affair sets off a chain reaction of play acting, deception, and escalating stakes.

Co-written by Linklater and Powell and inspired by an incredible true story, Hit Man is a smart existential comedy about identity that premiered at Venice and was selected at Sundance.

Hit Man is distributed by Prorom in Eastern Europe.