In conversation with CODA’s writer and director Siân Heder and actresses Marlee Matlin and Emilia Jones

CODA follows 17-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) 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 (Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur) and working the family's struggling fishing boat with her father and older brother (Daniel Durant) every day before school. 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 (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo). Encouraged by her enthusiastic, tough-love choirmaster (Eugenio Derbez) 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.

CODA made history at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival by being honored with all four of the top awards in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category including the U.S. Grand Jury Prize, the Directing Award, the Audience Award and a Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast.

Joining us is writer and director Siân Heder and actresses Marlee Matlin and Emilia Jones, who will be in conversation with Wendy Mitchell about their experience working together, the creative challenges of developing the characters and storyline and what it has been like sharing the film with audiences. They’ll also talk about working alongside the film’s Director of ASL (DASL) Alexandria Wailes, using ASL on set and how that changed the experience of filmmaking for each of them.

This event will be BSL interpreted and live captioned.

CODA premiered on 13 August 2021 and is now available to watch on Apple TV+. Attendees will also be offered the option to select a ticket to view CODA. A link and access code will be shared ahead of the event. To receive a screening link, you must book a ticket by 14:00 on Wednesday 1 December.

Siân Heder grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a family of visual artists. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she works as a writer, director and showrunner. Her most recent work includes executive producing and co-showrunning “Little America” for Apple TV+ and directing CODA. She wrote and produced for three seasons on the acclaimed Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, receiving multiple WGA nominations for her work. Her other television credits include Men of a Certain Age, which earned her a Peabody Award. She has directed episodes of Netflix’s GLOW and Orange Is the New Black, Hulu’s The Pathand Little America. Her first short film, Mother, was awarded the Cinéfondation Jury Award at Cannes Film Festival. Her debut feature film, Tallulah, starring Elliot Page and Alison Janney, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was released as a Netflix original.

Emilia Jones currently stars in Netflix’s adaptation of Locke & Key. In 2019, she had a leading role in the BAFTA-nominated Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans, opposite Sebastien Croft. In 2019, she starred in Nuclear, directed by Catherine Linstrum. Other feature credits include High Rise, Brimstone, Incident in a Ghostland and the BBC feature-length film What We Did on Our Holiday. Jones began acting in 2010, at the age of eight, when she appeared in the film One Day. She went on to be seen in the Channel 4 drama Utopia and later the same year portrayed the young Queen of Years, Merry Gejelh, in the British cult-hit Doctor Who. In 2011, Emilia made her theatrical debut playing the princess Young Fiona in the original cast of Shrek the Musical at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In 2013, she appeared in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s stage adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.

Marlee Matlin received worldwide critical acclaim for her motion picture debut in Children of a Lesser God, a performance the film community chose to recognize with its highest honor—the Academy Award for Best Actress. At age 21, she became the youngest recipient of the Best Actress Oscar and one of only four actresses to receive that honor for a film debut. In addition to the Oscar, Matlin was honored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama.

Matlin made her television debut starring alongside Lee Remick in Bridge to Silence. She went on to star for two seasons in the series Reasonable Doubts, opposite Mark Harmon. She was twice nominated for both a Golden Globe Award as Best Actress in a Dramatic Television Series, as well as the People’s Choice Award. Matlin was nominated for two Emmy Awards for her guest turns on “Seinfeld" and "Picket Fences.” She also starred in "Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story,” a movie for Lifetime Television in which she was nominated for a CableACE Award for Best Actress in a Movie or Mini-Series. Marlee broke yet another barrier with the role, playing a character that was not Deaf.

Matlin later returned to CBS’s Picket Fences for two seasons to reprise her Emmy-nominated role. For seven seasons, Matlin starred opposite Martin Sheen, Jimmy Smits and Bradley Whitford as pollster Joey Lucas on the Emmy Award-winning series, The West Wing. Matlin received her third Emmy Award nomination for her work on "The Practice,” and guest-starred on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, receiving her fourth Emmy nomination for her performance.

Matlin is an executive producer of the short film Feeling Through, which will be included in this year’s Slamdance Film Festival. It is the first film to feature a DeafBlind actor in a leading role. The film is currently up for Oscar 2021 consideration.

Matlin’s New York Times best-selling autobiography I’ll Scream Later was published by Simon Spotlight, a division of Simon and Schuster, in April 2009. In addition, Matlin published a novel for children titled Deaf Child Crossing for Simon and Schuster. Matlin has been instrumental in many activities that are aiding the Deaf and hard of hearing communities — this is the first year that all Academy screeners will have closed captions. She helped get legislation passed that mandated ASL interpreters be present at all COVID-19 press conferences. 

She also organized a PSA that included leaders in the Deaf and hard of hearing community that aided the 20 million Deaf and hard of hearing Americans in accessing resources on how to vote in the past elections.

She makes her home in the greater Los Angeles area with her husband and their four children.

Wendy Mitchell is a journalist, moderator and film festival consultant. She is a contributing editor at ScreenDaily, where she previously served as editor in chief, and is the editor of the European Film Academy‘s Close-up magazine. She is the Nordic and UK delegate for the San Sebastian Film Festival and a consultant for the International Film Festival Rotterdam – IFFR, Zürich International Film Festival and Zürich Summit and Connext by Flanders Image. In the US, she previously worked on staff at Entertainment Weekly, IndieWire and Rolling Stone.

Event Schedule:

17:55: Please join the webinar waiting room

18:00: Wendy to lead conversation

18:45: Audience Q&A

19:00: Finish

How will the online event work?

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