Woman-Directed “CODA,” With Marlee Matlin, Is a Milestone for Representation

The family comedy/drama CODA represents a big step forward for female movie directors, as well as for the deaf community. Written and directed by Siân Heder, the movie — whose title is an acronym for “child of deaf adult(s)” — won several prizes and set an acquisition record after its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Apple TV+ bought the rights to CODA for a reported $25 million — the highest amount so far for any movie to premiere at Sundance. In addition, CODA received Sundance accolades in the U.S. dramatic competition categories of Grand Jury Award (the festival’s top prize), Audience Award, Directing, and the Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast. It’s the first time a movie has swept all of these Sundance awards in one year. CODA was released August 13 on Apple TV+ and in select theaters.

CODA tells the story of a talented aspiring singer named Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones), a teenager in her last year of high school in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where her family is in the fishing business. The family members she lives with — her mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin, the first deaf person to win an Oscar), father Frank (Troy Kotsur), and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant) — all happen to be deaf, while Ruby is the only one in the household who is hearing. Ruby’s family relies on her to be an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter for their business dealings and other interactions with people who don’t know ASL. In the movie, Ruby has to decide whether to continue working in her family’s business or to apply to the prestigious Berklee College of Music, on a recommendation from her school’s choir director, Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez), who is a Berklee alum.

CODA is an American remake of the 2014 French film La Famille Bélier, which had a similar story but had hearing actors portraying the deaf characters. Besides changing the setting from France to the United States, writer/director Heder was adamant in casting deaf actors in the roles of CODA’s deaf characters. She also made sure that deaf people were on the film set as consultants and other members of the crew. It’s the type of representation that she and many others hope to see more of for deaf people and others from the disability community.

Heder tells Women’s Media Center that during the filmmaking process for CODA, some people initially had doubts about her decision to have ASL dialogue as a significant part of the movie: “Going into the process, there was so much talk about how much of the movie was in ASL. When I wrote the movie, about 40% of the scenes were in ASL. Also, I wanted to make sure it was pure ASL, so that the hearing character was not speaking through those scenes [while people with ASL were signing their parts of the conversation], which is often what happens when hearing and deaf characters are portrayed on screen together.”

She elaborates, “In all of these early conversations, there was a lot of talk of, ‘Will hearing audiences have patience for these long, silent scenes? Will they be invested in this family, despite the fact that this language [ASL] is something new [to most mainstream audiences]?’ And what’s been so surprising to me is nobody [who’s seen the film] even mentions that now.”

Heder continues, “I remember when we were cutting the movie — I think toward the end of the movie there are five ASL scenes in a row — and the question came up, ‘Are audiences going to feel uncomfortable in the silence?’ And I was like, ‘Good! Let them feel uncomfortable. I want them to have a cultural experience of what this is to be inside of an ASL conversation.’ I love that audiences relate to this family … I think people feel really invested in the characters and the emotions.”

Speaking of investments, since her Sundance triumphs for CODA, Apple TV+ has signed Heder to a first-look deal for movies and exclusive content for TV series. Prior to the release of CODA (her second feature film), Heder had experience as an executive producer, director, and writer for Apple TV+’s Little America series. She was also a co-producer, writer, story editor, and director for Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black series.

Heder says that although she came from a family of creatives — her parents and sister are artists/illustrators — that didn’t mean she didn’t have identity struggles, just like Ruby in CODA. Heder says that the question she had to answer for herself is, “Who am I, and what’s my art?” She believes that having a strong sense of self is necessary to survive in the entertainment industry, where other people constantly question your judgment or try to change who you are.

“There’s always a process, especially when getting a film made, where you’re asked to compromise,” Heder says. “It’s part of how you get your project going. And it’s always been a dance for me to understand the places where I am unwilling to compromise and where I would be sacrificing my vision in a way that would be so harmful to the project that I would rather not see the project get made. Trusting those instincts … were things I felt very sure of and committed to … because if you’re not listening to your voice as an artist, you’re not going to make anything good.”

Next up for Heder: She’s writing and directing the biopic Being Heumann, based on the life and memoir of disability rights activist Judith “Judy” Heumann, a woman with paraplegia who was prominently featured in the Oscar-nominated 2020 Netflix documentary Crip Camp. Heder is also one of the producers of Being Heumann. According to Deadline, the filmmakers are in talks for Ali Stroker to star as Heumann in the movie. Stroker made Tony Awards history in 2019, when she became the first wheelchair-using actor to win a Tony Award. She got the prize for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for her co-starring role in an Oklahoma! revival.

Heder couldn’t yet reveal who’s in the Being Heumann cast, but she says that she’s committed to taking a similar approach that she took with CODA — by casting characters with actors who have similar physical abilities and disabilities, and to have this diversity behind the scenes. “There’s an incredible creative opportunity to cast an actor who has lived the experience they have lived on screen,” Heder comments. “I found that it was invaluable to me as a director on CODA, and is certainly something that I am carrying forward onto Being Heumann — both in the casting on screen and the team I’m putting together off screen to tell this story. I don’t think you can tell a story about a community — especially a community that has been historically marginalized and underrepresented — without including that community in the storytelling.”

As someone who has worked in front of the camera as an actress and behind the camera as writer, director, and producer, Heder says that she’s also optimistic about the future of diversity and inclusion in film and TV. “The past two years have been a big leap forward,” Heder says. “And that’s very exciting to me, not just in terms of who is being empowered in who’s telling the stories but also the stories that are getting told as a result. Audiences are hungry for those stories.”