Trailer
Plot summary
In the Rossi household in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Ruby is the only one of four who can hear: her parents, Frank and Jackie, and her older brother Leo are deaf, and she interprets for them. She plans to work the boat full time once school ends. Because Miles, the boy she likes, signs up for choir, Ruby does too, and the choir teacher, Bernardo Villalobos, urges her to sing more and offers private lessons to prepare her for an audition at Berklee College of Music. New fees from the local board squeeze the family's catch, and Frank's plan to sell his fish on his own keeps Ruby translating for him and arriving late to those lessons.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about CODA (2021)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Marlee Matlin was the first person cast in CODA, and when the film's financiers resisted casting deaf actors for the other deaf roles, she threatened to drop out unless they did; the financiers ultimately relented.
- Two days after CODA's Sundance premiere, Apple outbid Amazon Studios and others to buy worldwide distribution rights for a festival-record $25 million. The deal enraged international distributors who had pre-sold the film to help finance its $10 million budget, and buyback offers were refused.
- CODA was the first film distributed by a streaming service, the first Sundance film and the first with predominantly deaf actors in lead roles to win Best Picture. It also had the fewest nominations for a Best Picture winner since 1932's Grand Hotel, and was the first since 2018's Green Book to win without a director nomination.
- Troy Kotsur's Best Supporting Actor win at the 75th British Academy Film Awards made him the first deaf person ever to win a BAFTA; the film took two of its three nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay for Sian Heder.
- CODA was initially rated R "for language" because of the subtitled profanity in the deaf characters' signed dialogue. After what Kotsur described as several fights with the MPA, it was reduced to PG-13 months before its official release.
- During location scouting, Sian Heder found the house she wanted for the Rossi family home and got its residents' permission to film there. The choirmaster's seaside Victorian house was one Heder had visited as a child, and its owners also let the crew shoot there.
- The scenes set at "Gloucester High School" were actually shot at the old Briscoe Middle School in Beverly, Massachusetts. The school had already closed and was being prepared for conversion into the Beverly Village for Living & the Arts.
- Sian Heder learned American Sign Language while writing the screenplay, 40% of which ended up in ASL. Two deaf collaborators she called her "ASL masters", Alexandria Wailes and Anne Tomasetti, helped her.
