Drumroll, please. The BFI London Film Festival‘s surprise film for 2025 is… Tuner, starring Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman. Director Daniel Roher and London hometown star Woodall even showed up on stage at the city’s Royal Festival Hall to much applause.
The heist thriller, from a screenplay by Roher and Robert Ramsey, also features Havana Rose Liu, Jean Reno, Lior Raz, and Tovah Feldshuh. The movie, the narrative debut from Oscar-winning documentarian Roher (Navalny), had its world premiere at Telluride in August.
Tuner follows an apprentice piano tuner, Niki (Woodall), with an auditory condition that proves useful as he tries to ease the financial burdens of his mentor (Hoffman) by moonlighting as a safecracker. Liu plays Ruthie, a driven music composition graduate student who starts a relationship with Niki.
The feature is a late addition to an impressive LFF lineup this year: Rian Johnson, Daniel Craig and the cast of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery ushered in this year’s edition at the opening night gala on Wednesday. Johnson told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet that it’s his “most personal” murder mystery yet.
On Friday, George Clooney and Noah Baumbach will present another Netflix film, Jay Kelly, and Emma Stone will reteam with Yorgos Lanthimos and Jesse Plemons for the U.K. premiere of Bugonia.
Saturday, the BFI will host Chloe Zhao, Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley for their critically-acclaimed Hamnet, and Luca Guadagnino will present After The Hunt alongside Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield. A host of nightly premieres complement a prestigious Film Talks selection as Zhao, Jon M. Chu, Lynne Ramsay, Daniel Day-Lewis, Richard Linklater and Tessa Thompson host industry-focused sessions.
Earlier this week, BFI London Film Fest director Kristy Matheson unpacked her ambitious 2025 program with THR. “We’re all struck by how formally daring cinema is this year,” said Matheson about the overarching themes she’s picked up on. “There have been so many examples of filmmakers really working to sort of stretch the medium to new and interesting places. That’s really exciting.”
The BFI London Film Festival 2025 runs Oct. 8-19.