SOUND OF METAL - RIZ AHMED, OLIVIA COOKE, PAUL RACI and DARIUS MARDER INTERVIEWS

Imagine you suddenly lose your hearing due to years of exposure to very loud music. That is the premise in the eye opening drama, Sound of Metal.

Riz Ahmed gives a heartbreaking and fabulous performance as Ruben Stone, a noise metal drummer. Proud and intense, he hammers out sets with his girlfriend and bandmate (Olivia Cooke) but with each show, a persistent ringing in his ears worsens until sound drops out altogether. For a deaf musician and his partner who've built their precarious existence doing what they know and love, what happens now? If he can't recover his hearing, who will he become?

Darius Marder, who co-wrote the screenplay for Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines (TIFF '12), begins in similar territory here — characters living by their own rules. But this film moves in new directions, and according to its own beat. As this drummer explores medical interventions to restore his hearing and begins to learn about both the experience and the culture of deafness, he confronts the gap between external sounds and that tinny inner noise he can't shake: the sound of metal.

Marder and his team do groundbreaking work to convey that subjective sonic experience, while Ahmed is simply brilliant and fully immersed in his character. As the story takes one surprising turn and then another, it builds to a journey that looks — and sounds — like life.

I spoke with stars Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooks, Paul Raci and writer/director Darius Marder about working on the film.