THE TUBA THIEVES

USA 2023 - DCP - 91 minutes, in English

Director, Screenplay: Alison O’Daniel

Producers: Su Kim, Rachel Nederveld, Alison O’Daniel, Maya E. Rudolph, Elizabeth Skadden

With: Nyeisha Prince, Geovanny Marroquin, Russell Harvard, Sam Quinones

Print Courtesy: The Film Collective

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. Blending documentary and fictionalized performances and set to an L.A. landscape/soundscape never quite seen/heard before, The Tuba Thieves explores a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way. This is NOT a conventional whodunit, to say the least. In The Tuba Thieves’ world, plants whisper and hum to each other, the air above a forest fire vibrates and one man’s ASL sign for “sunrise” is infinitely more expressive than the English word alone. —KE