Festivals - Sundance Film Festival 2021 : Coda will have its world premiere

By Mulder, 20 december 2020

Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the only hearing member of a deaf family. At 17, she works mornings before school to help her parents (Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) and brother (Daniel Durant) keep their Gloucester fishing business afloat. But in joining her high school’s choir club, Ruby finds herself drawn to both her duet partner (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and her latent passion for singing. Her enthusiastic, tough-love choirmaster (Eugenio Derbez) hears something special and encourages Ruby to consider music school and a future beyond fishing, leaving her torn between obligation to family and pursuit of her dream.

Siân Heder’s heartwarming, exuberant follow-up to Tallulah (2016 Sundance Film Festival) brings us inside the idiosyncratic rhythms and emotions of a deaf family—something we’ve rarely seen on screen. In developing CODA, which stands for Child of Deaf Adults, Heder was determined to tell the story authentically with deaf actors. Her writing and direction—layered, naturalistic, frank, and funny—finds perfect expression in richly drawn characters and a uniformly outstanding cast, led by Jones in a fantastic breakout performance.

Synopsis :
This is about a hearing child in a deaf family who finds herself torn between pursuing her love of music and her family's reliance on her to be their connection to the outside world.

Coda (USA)
Written and directed by Siân Heder
Produced by Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, Patrick Wachsberger
Executive Producers : Ardavan Safaee, Sarah Borch-Jacobsen
Production Designer : Diane Lederman
Starring Emilia Jones, Eugenio Derbez, Troy Kotsur, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Daniel Durant and Marlee Matlin
Music by Nick Baxter
Executive Music Producer : Marius de Vries
Costume Designer : Brenda Abbandandolo
Cinematography : Paula Huidobro
Edited by Geraud Brisson
Distributed by Vendôme Pictures and Pathé Films
Release date : January 29, 2021 (Sundance)
Running time : 111 minutes

Premiere: jan 29 - 1:45am // Second screening : jan. 30 - 4:00pm (local time)

(Source : press release)