The secret to a Sundance success
How CODA defied the odds to become a historic, recordbreaking festival hit
CODA (SHORT FOR ‘child of deaf adults’) broke records when it premiered at Sundance earlier this year. The sweet-natured story of a Deaf family, and the hearing daughter torn between being an interpreter and a singing competition, became the biggest sale ever in the festival’s history, selling to Apple for a reported $25million. Here, director Sian Heder explains the winning formula of her feel-good festival hit.
A TRUE-T0-LIFE CAST
“I was determined to cast authentically,” says Heder, noting there was some “educating the producers on why it was important”. (The film is based on a French film, 2014’s La Famille Bélier, which was controversial for casting hearing actors in Deaf roles.) The key, she says, was hiring the Oscar-winning deaf actor Marlee Matlin as the matriarch of the family. “She was instrumental,” says Heder. “Once Marlee was on board, we could be making that argument together.” Having deaf actors on set not only helped make the performances feel real, but pick up on small details of daily Deaf life. “[They would say], ‘This is not where a Deaf family would put their couch!’ You would want to make sure that you could see the exits, rather than the TV.”
A UNIVERSAL STORY
“I’m always interested in stories of people who feel like outsiders,” says Heder, who previously worked on Orange Is The New Black. “I grew up in a very, very tight-knit family. My dad was a refugee and I think if it were up to my dad, we would have all been in the same room, sleeping in a pile.” Heder was interested in the universal themes that a specific story about a Deaf family could have, noting that, “A lot of children of immigrants have said that the story really resonates for them.” A FILTHY SENSE OF HUMOUR
The first words in sign language people usually want to learn are the rude ones; if you want to learn “twat waffle” in ASL, this is the film for you. “I have a pretty dirty sense of humour,” admits Heder, who says she encouraged improv on set, to up the realism stakes. “Troy Kotsur, who played the father, is a very funny guy,” she says. “He would just crack us up, coming up with outlandish ways to sign certain things. Because it’s so visual, it feels even dirtier — y’know, if you sign ‘vagina’, it looks like a vagina.”john
CODA IS ON APPLE TV+ AND IN CINEMAS FROM 13 AUGUST