CODA (2021)
Director: Sian Heder Run Time: 112 min. Rating: PG-13 Release Year: 2021
Starring: Daniel Durant, Emilia Jones, Eugenio Derbez, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Troy Kotsur
Country: United States, France
Language: American Sign Language, English
About the film:
Siân Heder’s CODA won Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Troy Kotsur at the 94th Academy Awards.
Broke records at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival by sweeping the U.S. Dramatic honors and winning the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, with Siân Heder taking home the Directing Award. The film also won a U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast.
Seventeen-year-old Ruby is the sole hearing member of a deaf family – a CODA, child of deaf adults. Her life revolves around acting as interpreter for her parents and working on the family’s struggling fishing boat every day before school with her father and older brother. But when Ruby joins her high school’s choir club, she discovers a gift for singing and soon finds herself drawn to her duet partner Miles. Encouraged by her enthusiastic, tough-love choirmaster to apply to a prestigious music school, Ruby finds herself torn between the obligations she feels to her family and the pursuit of her own dreams.
About the filmmaker:
Siân Heder is a writer-director whose debut feature, Tallulah, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was released by Netflix. She is executive producer and co-showrunner on Little America for Apple. Previously, she wrote and produced on Orange is the New Black, receiving multiple Writers Guild Award nominations. Other television credits include Men of a Certain Age and Glow. Her first short film, Mother, was awarded the Cinefondation Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
CODA took home top prizes at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and the 94th Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
See our upcoming films“This is a huge moment for independent film… This is the stuff dreams are made of, it’s really been amazing. Yes, to women out there, to indie filmmakers out there, to anybody who’s fighting to tell a story, this is a beautiful moment.”
—Director Siân Heder