The Best Picture winner about a deaf family and hearing daughter Ruby Rossi is CODA.
Sian Heder wrote and directed this 2021 coming-of-age comedy-drama, with Emilia Jones playing Ruby, the only hearing member of the Rossi family. Ruby helps with the family’s Massachusetts fishing business while discovering that she wants to become a singer. Her ambitions force the family to reconsider how much they depend on her as an interpreter.
The title is an acronym for “child of deaf adults.” CODA was adapted from the 2014 French-Belgian film La Famille Bélier, but Heder relocated and reshaped the story for an American setting. Deaf actors Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, and Daniel Durant play Ruby’s deaf father, mother, and brother, respectively.
The film became a landmark Oscar winner at the 94th Academy Awards. It won Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Kotsur from three nominations. It was also the first film distributed by a streaming service to win Best Picture, although reactions among deaf viewers were not uniformly positive.