CODA is a 2021 coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Sian Heder. An English-language remake of the 2014 French-Belgian film La Famille Bélier, it stars Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi, the child of deaf adults (CODA) and only hearing member of her family, who attempts to help her family's struggling fishing business while pursuing her aspirations to become a singer.
The movie uses deaf actors to play the deaf characters, who, along with Jones, communicate using American Sign Language. Eugenio Derbez, Troy Kotsur, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Daniel Durant (in his feature film debut), and Marlee Matlin are featured in supporting roles. An international co-production between the United States and France, with Philippe Rousselet producing, as La Famille Bélier, it was filmed on location in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the United States.
CODA had its world premiere on , 2021, at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where Apple acquired its distribution rights for a festival-record $25 million. The film was released through the Apple TV+ streaming service on August 13, 2021. It received largely positive reviews from critics, who praised Heder's screenplay and Kotsur's performance, although feedback from deaf viewers was polarized. It was named one of the top 10 films of 2021 by the American Film Institute and has since been cited as among the best films of the 2020s.
CODA won numerous awards, including all three of its nominations at the 94th Academy Awards – Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Kotsur, and Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the seventh Best Picture winner to win every award for which it was nominated. It became both the first film distributed by a streaming service and the first film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to win Best Picture. Kotsur also became the first male deaf actor to win an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award. The film also won the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture in addition to the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
A stage musical adaptation was in the works as of 2024.
Plot
In Gloucester, Massachusetts, 17-year-old Ruby Rossi is the only hearing member of her family; her parents, Frank and Jackie, and older brother, Leo, are all deaf. Ruby assists with the family fishing business and plans to join it full-time after high school. One day at school, Ruby sees her crush, Miles Patterson, signing up for choir as his elective, so she also signs up. The music teacher, Mr. Bernardo "Mr. V" Villalobos, encourages Ruby to sing more and assigns her to a duet with Miles.
Meanwhile, Frank and Leo struggle to make ends meet with the fishing business as new fees and sanctions are imposed by the local board. At a board meeting, everyone is angry about the fact that more boats are disappearing from the harbor. During the yelling, Frank announces that he is going to start his own company to get around the new restrictions and intends to sell his fish on his own, inviting other local fishermen to join him. The family struggles to get the new business off the ground, relying on Ruby to spread the word.
Mr. V encourages Ruby to audition for Berklee College of Music, his alma mater, and offers her private lessons to prepare. Ruby agrees, but her increasing commitments to the family business (her parents are dependent upon her to interpret for them) cause her to be late to their lessons. Mr. V grows irritated with Ruby's constant tardiness and chastises her for wasting his time and not caring enough about music.
While fishing one day, when Ruby is off swimming with Miles, Frank and Leo sail with a federal fishing observer on board, who does not know in advance that they are deaf. The boat is intercepted by the Coast Guard after failing to respond to ship horns and radio calls. Frank and Leo are fined and have their fishing licenses suspended for negligence. When they tell Ruby that she should have been on the boat with them, Ruby tells them she cannot always interpret for them and she was not at fault. Frank and Leo appeal and get their license back on the condition that they have a hearing person on board at all times. Ruby announces to the family that she is forgoing college and will join the business full-time. Frank and Jackie are supportive, but Leo reacts angrily, insisting that they can manage without Ruby as she truly has talent. He and Ruby later have an argument where he tells her that she will forever regret not going to college.
Ruby's family attends her choir recital and notices the positive reception from the surrounding audience. That night, Frank asks Ruby to sing for him while he feels her vocal cords, growing emotional. The family then drives to Boston with Ruby for her Berklee audition. Before her audition, she sees Miles, who reveals that he failed at his audition and wishes her luck. Ruby's family sneaks up to the balcony while Mr. V comes to accompany her on piano. Ruby is nervous and unprepared at first, but after Mr. V deliberately makes a mistake on his accompaniment, she is allowed to start again and gains confidence when she sees her family. Ruby signs along while singing "Both Sides, Now" by Joni Mitchell, so they can understand what she is singing.
Ruby is accepted to Berklee and invites Miles to visit her in Boston. Meanwhile, the hearing workers in the family's fishing business have been learning sign language, enabling them to communicate with and interpret for the family. Ruby's friend Gertie drives her to Boston for college as her family sees them off; Frank verbally tells her, "Go," and Ruby signs, "I love you so much" (literal translation: "I really love you") to them as they drive away.
Cast Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi Eugenio Derbez as Bernardo "Mr. V" Villalobos, the high school choir director Troy Kotsur as Frank Rossi, Ruby's father Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as Miles Patterson, Ruby's crush Marlee Matlin as Jackie Rossi, Ruby's mother Daniel Durant as Leo Rossi, Ruby's brother Amy Forsyth as Gertie, Ruby's best friend Sarah Clarke as Tanya Kevin Chapman as Brady John Fiore as Tony Salgado Rebecca Gibel as Joanne Biles Emilia Faucher as Misha
Production Development and writing
CODA, written and directed by Sian Heder, is an English-language remake of the French-language film La Famille Bélier, which was released in 2014 and was successful at the French box office. Philippe Rousselet was one of the original film's producers, and he had the right to do a remake. He and producer Patrick Wachsberger approached Heder to direct a remake for a United States audience. Heder said, "They were interested in adapting the film, but they wanted someone to make it unique and take the premise from the original and, also, reinvent it." By May 2019, the companies Pathé Films and Vendôme Group had formed a film production partnership to develop and produce English-language films, with the first being CODA.
CODA is set in Gloucester, Massachusetts. While its predecessor La Famille Bélier was set on a rural dairy farm in France, Heder chose to set CODA in Gloucester, being familiar with the city from visiting the North Shore in the summer when growing up. Heder explained, "For me, it has the combination of being very picturesque and quintessentially New England but also with a working-class grit to it." Heder learned American Sign Language in the process of writing the script, with 40% of it ultimately being in ASL. The director was helped by two deaf collaborators whom she called "ASL masters", Alexandria Wailes and Anne Tomasetti.
To prepare for the film, Heder observed a fish processing plant and consulted the local harbormaster about how authorities would raid a boat. She received feedback from director Kenneth Lonergan—who directed the 2016 film Manchester by the Sea, which was set in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts—and members of the fishing-industry nonprofit Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association. Several consultants and a fisherman educated Heder in local fishing practices.
Casting
Marlee Matlin, an award-winning and internationally known actress, was the first person cast for the film. During the development process, the film's financiers resisted casting deaf actors for the remaining deaf characters, but Matlin threatened to drop out unless deaf actors were cast, and the financiers ultimately relented.
Heder described the casting as an opportunity for Matlin to play against type, her previous roles have been "'put-together' and classy characters". Heder said, "Marlee, in real life, is much more funny, and she has a dirty sense of humor. This (role) was a working-class fisherman's wife, and she has a lot of elements of her personality that were very right for this character." Matlin used her connections with Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles, California, to help Heder find additional deaf actors. Heder saw Troy Kotsur in a Deaf West production and cast him as the fisherman and father. She cast Daniel Durant after finding him through auditions. Matlin, Kotsur, and Durant were already familiar with one another through their collaboration on the Deaf West production of the musical Spring Awakening.
Matlin described her interest in getting CODA made, "I felt that audiences would really see deaf people in a film ... There are so many levels for people to identify with and, for people with no connection, who have never met a deaf person, to see sign language, to see deaf people in normal, day-to-day settings ... People think that deaf people are monolithic in how they approach life. And this film bursts that myth ... But to burst that myth, it had to be told as authentically as possible. And it's strange because studios clearly have the ability to greenlight a film and cast whomever they want, and there continues to be a lack of awareness that you can tell universal stories with deaf characters." Kotsur said, "You have to think a little bit outside the box and present more opportunities, instead of just having two options ... You know, you write this script because somebody's deaf, or I'm writing it because it's a character that happens to be deaf. There's a distinction there."
Heder hired a rotating group of ASL interpreters that facilitated communication with signing and speaking among the cast and crew. She connected with the deaf community in nearby Boston to secure the interpreters for on-set communication. Matlin said, "[Heder] really immersed herself into our culture and made every attempt to learn and to work with us and having two directors of sign language on the set, plus interpreters, plus the crew who learned our language, everyone working together, it was working like on any other set, but the sign language aspect made it extra special."
The director also auditioned hundreds of teenage girls before casting Emilia Jones as the hearing member of the deaf family. Jones took voice lessons and learned ASL for nine months before filming started. Heder also chose to cast Eugenio Derbez as the girl's choirmaster, seeing him as a fit for her "amalgamation of Heder's college rhythm teacher and her high school drama and English teachers".
Filming The film was shot on location in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the middle of 2019.
In the film, the family lives in what WBUR's The ARTery described as a "creaky clapboard cottage [with] a yard jammed with boats, traps, and nets". During location scouting, Heder came across what she found to be the ideal house for the family home and received permission from its residents to use it as a filming location. The choirmaster's home was a Victorian-style house on the sea, where Heder had visited family friends multiple times in her childhood, and they allowed her to film there.