Riz Ahmed battles hearing loss in powerful trailer for Sound of Metal

Losing one of your primary senses seems like an unimaginable experience, but it's something most of us will have to deal with to varying degrees at some point in our lives. Amazon Studios have unveiled the first trailer for SOUND OF METAL, a drama that tells the story of a punk-metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) who begins to experience intermittent hearing loss and is told that his condition will rapidly worsen. After being checked into a secluded sober house for the deaf by his girlfriend and bandmate Lou (Olivia Cooke), Ruben must learn to adapt to his new situation.

In order to immerse himself in the role, Riz Ahmed learned American Sign Language and how to play the drums, which he said helped him feel his way into the character rather than think his way into it. "I think learning to play the drums, it's such a primal instinctive instrument, it forces you to kind of get out of your thinking brain," Ahmed told ETCanada at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, adding that "expressing yourself through sign language, words a lot of the time they mask our real feelings, but when you have to express yourself with your whole body, it brings out a different level of honesty."

The official synopsis for SOUND OF METAL:

During a series of adrenaline-fueled one-night gigs, itinerant punk-metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) begins to experience intermittent hearing loss. When a specialist tells him his condition will rapidly worsen, he thinks his music career — and with it his life — is over. His bandmate and girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) checks the recovering heroin addict into a secluded sober house for the deaf in hopes it will prevent a relapse and help him learn to adapt to his new situation. But after being welcomed into a community that accepts him just as he is, Ruben has to choose between his equilibrium and the drive to reclaim the life he once knew. Utilizing startling, innovative sound design techniques, director Darius Marder takes audiences inside Ruben's experience to vividly recreate his journey into a rarely examined world.

SOUND OF METAL is slated to hit select theaters on November 20th, 2020 before launching on Amazon Prime Video on December 4, 2020.