Director Daniel Roher talks about actors as if he were an anthropologist.
Before he started working on “Tuner,” his fictional feature debut about a piano tuner with a unique auditory condition, Roher had mainly done documentaries.
In his short career, the Oscar-winning director, who is in his early 30s, has told the stories of musician Robbie Robertson, who was the guitarist and primary songwriter for The Band; Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and the events surrounding his 2020 poisoning; and, at this year’s festival, an exploration of the threats and promises of artificial intelligence.
But until “Tuner,” which is also screening at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, Roher had never actually worked with actors before.
“I was nervous about their whole vocation, they seemed strange to me,” the director said at the screening of “Tuner” that opened the Sundance Film Festival on Thursday. “Everything they do is just bizarre, but interesting and fascinating. I have tremendous respect for them, for their abilities, for the way that they operate, but I don’t understand.”
On the set of “Tuner,” the first actor who ended up coming Roher’s way was Dustin Hoffman.
Working with the veteran actor, whose legendary career dates back to the late 1960s, was “a dream come true,” Roher said.
‘Tuner’ director Daniel Roher on working with Dustin Hoffman
As a first-time director of a fictional feature, Roher really didn’t know what to expect from the actors on set.
But he wasn’t expecting Hoffman — who was the Carl Bernstein to Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward in the 1976 thriller “All the President’s Men” — to treat him like he was a veteran filmmaker.
“He treated me like it was 1968, I was Mike Nichols, he was Dustin Hoffman, I was giving him his big break in ‘The Graduate.’ That reverence and respect,” Roher told the Deseret News ahead of the “Tuner” screening. “He called me sir, he called me boss. I was like, ‘Mr. Hoffman, don’t call me sir.’ … That’s how he approached everybody.
“Dustin Hoffman loves movies. He loves making movies, he loves being on set,” Roher continued. “He would show up early. He was a good sport — he never said no.”
One example: Whenever morale was low on set, and people were tired and wanted to go home, Roher said he’d ask the 88-year-old actor to do his Captain Hook voice (Hoffman voiced the “Peter Pan” villain in the 1991 movie “Hook”).
“Without hesitation, he’d say, ‘I hate, I hate, I hate Peter Pan,’” Roher said with a laugh during an audience Q&A after the “Tuner” screening. “He’d get in character and talk to everybody as Captain Hook. Nothing boosts morale like a visit with Captain Hook.”
During the Q&A, Roher shared that while going over the script with Hoffman, he learned the actor wanted to be a jazz musician when he was 15. As a teenager, Hoffman would go and hear the late Oscar Peterson play some jazz piano in Los Angeles. Some of the stories Hoffman tells in “Tuner,” Roher said, are the actor’s own.
“I love him very much and I’m so grateful that I got to work with him,” Roher told the Deseret News. “It’s truly a dream come true and I will always cherish our friendship.”
From ‘Navalny’ to ‘Tuner’
“Tuner” marks a new direction for Roher, whose 2022 documentary “Navalny” won the Sundance Film Festival Favorite Award, and an Oscar a year later.
The film follows Niki White (played by Leo Woodall), a piano prodigy who no longer plays due to developing a unique auditory condition that makes him hypersensitive to loud sounds. To stay connected to the instrument he loves, he works as a piano tuner alongside his uncle, Harry Horowitz (Hoffman). Throughout the comedy/thriller/romance, Niki grapples with this loss and explores how to make the most of his auditory condition — including cracking safes.
“This film is very much a reaction to ‘Navalny,’” Roher said during the Q&A after “Tuner,” which premiered last year at the Telluride Film Festival. “This idea that I don’t want to be put in a box. I want to be expansive … prove to myself that I could do this.”
“Tuner,” which will likely draw an R rating for strong language, is scheduled to hit theaters in late May.