Sian Hed­er: ​‘A dis­abil­i­ty is only a dis­abil­i­ty if soci­ety makes it so’

One of the break­out hits from this year’s Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val was Sian Heder’s CODA, a mov­ing com­ing-of-age dra­ma about a hear­ing teenage girl and her Deaf fam­i­ly. An Eng­lish-lan­guage remake of 2014’s La Famille Béli­er, the film fol­lows Ruby (Emil­ia Jones) and her fam­i­ly who run a strug­gling fish­ing busi­ness. While Ruby’s par­ents and broth­er are depen­dent on her for inter­pre­ta­tion, she has a pas­sion for singing and faces the age-old dilem­ma of choos­ing between her dreams of going to music school or stay­ing behind to sup­port her family’s liveli­hood. It’s a heart­felt, uni­ver­sal sto­ry, but it’s the film’s cham­pi­oning of Deaf tal­ent that makes it stand out.

LWLies: The CODA [Child of Deaf Adults] per­spec­tive has rarely been por­trayed as ten­der­ly as this. What moti­vat­ed you to make this film, and did you have any expe­ri­ences with Deaf cul­ture beforehand?

Hed­er: After I was at Sun­dance with my first film, Talul­lah, I came back and met with the pro­duc­ers. I loved the idea. The CODA expe­ri­ence is so spe­cif­ic and it’s inter­est­ing to be bridg­ing the hear­ing world and the Deaf world. My trep­i­da­tion was that I wasn’t part of the Deaf com­mu­ni­ty and so I felt like an out­sider. To prop­er­ly tell that sto­ry, I knew I was going to have to sur­round myself with Deaf col­lab­o­ra­tors and peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty who were going to put my hear­ing per­spec­tive in check and make sure that I was authen­tic in the sto­ry­telling. I felt a lot of respon­si­bil­i­ty to hon­our Deaf cul­ture. I couldn’t have made the film in the way that I made it with­out hav­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tors that I had.

Did you feel it was impor­tant to show the light-heart­ed side of a sign­ing fam­i­ly, to show sign- and Deaf-spe­cif­ic humour?

I was a teenag­er who was embar­rassed by my par­ents all the time; they were total­ly open about their sex life and inap­pro­pri­ate with my friends. I think when we see dis­abil­i­ty rep­re­sent­ed on screen, that humour often isn’t there. It’s treat­ed either as, ​‘These char­ac­ters are an object of pity,’ or, ​‘They’re so noble and earnest,’ and that’s not my expe­ri­ence. My Deaf friends are just as crazy and fun­ny – I would say more so than my hear­ing friends because the cul­ture is a lit­tle bit more blunt and visu­al. I want­ed to cap­ture that.

The par­ent char­ac­ters, Frank and Jack­ie, have a very lov­ing and pas­sion­ate relationship.

That was sort of based on my par­ents, who were always very open about sex. My par­ents have been togeth­er for 50 years; they’re an intense cou­ple who fight like crazy but are still real­ly in love. That was impor­tant for me to rep­re­sent. Troy [Kot­sur] has the cra­zi­est, fun­ni­est sense of humour, and Mar­lee [Matlin] is pret­ty dirty and crazy as well. Troy was just mak­ing every­body laugh and he was always cross­ing the line. When we shot that sex talk, I was going into the mon­i­tor like, ​‘Oh my god, this film is gonna get like an NC-17 rat­ing because of Troy’s sign­ing get­ting wilder and wilder.’ I was lucky to have Troy because he’s an amaz­ing impro­vis­er. He brought so much com­e­dy just in his imag­i­na­tion and his cre­ativ­i­ty on set.

Mar­lee Matlin is renowned for being the first and only deaf actor to win an Oscar. What was it like open­ing the audi­tion­ing door to deaf actors and to work with a team of both hear­ing peo­ple and peo­ple with vary­ing deaf experiences?

The most inter­est­ing thing for me, both in the expe­ri­ence of the actors and the expe­ri­ence of the char­ac­ters, is that there’s not one expe­ri­ence of deaf­ness. Often­times in films there’s one Deaf char­ac­ter, if there’s any. We had three [Deaf] peo­ple on screen as a fam­i­ly who are all very dif­fer­ent in life and in their char­ac­ters. It was impor­tant to me that this isn’t a sto­ry about deaf­ness or Deaf cul­ture. This is about these spe­cif­ic char­ac­ters in this spe­cif­ic fam­i­ly. In that speci­fici­ty, you end up telling a uni­ver­sal sto­ry because you’re not try­ing to rep­re­sent the whole experience.

I think for Mar­lee it was very free­ing to be on a set with oth­er Deaf peo­ple. We had sev­en inter­preters on set; three of them were CODAs. We had two Deaf ASL mas­ters, so ASL estab­lished the cul­ture on our set, as opposed to the oth­er way around. The hear­ing peo­ple had to fit into the Deaf world as opposed to the Deaf peo­ple hav­ing to adapt and fit into a hear­ing world. Emil­ia and I would be work­ing on set when there were no Deaf actors work­ing and we would be sign­ing with each oth­er because it’s a great lan­guage to use when you’re on a boat and you can’t be right next to each other.

One thing that stands out is the lack of deaf access in the scenes with the doc­tors and the court; Ruby’s fam­i­ly are always rely­ing on her to inter­pret for them. Was this some­thing that was con­sid­ered dur­ing filming?

To me, the family’s class lev­el was a very impor­tant ele­ment of the movie because mon­ey is a huge part of access. For Deaf peo­ple who want to take a meet­ing, they have to find and hire an inter­preter. If you are not in a finan­cial posi­tion to pro­vide resources, and if the com­pa­nies you’re work­ing with aren’t pro­vid­ing those resources, then you don’t have access. It was very impor­tant to show that they’re strug­gling finan­cial­ly. The rea­son they’re rely­ing on their daugh­ter is because this is a small town which doesn’t have resources. Tak­ing the film out in the world, I have real­ly focused on access. Every­thing needs to be cap­tioned, we need inter­preters at every film fes­ti­val screen­ing and we’re edu­cat­ing the whole team that, ​‘If this movie enters the world, you have to make sure that it’s avail­able to every­body.’ A dis­abil­i­ty is only a dis­abil­i­ty if you have a soci­ety that makes it so.

Being from Mass­a­chu­setts your­self, what was it like return­ing to that region?

I’m from out­side that town, but I went there every sum­mer grow­ing up. When I was research­ing the movie, I met the Glouces­ter Fishermen’s Wives Asso­ci­a­tion. There were some ladies there who broke down what had hap­pened in the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty. They told me about the decline and how the fish­ing reg­u­la­tions, which were impor­tant envi­ron­men­tal­ly, real­ly hurt fam­i­ly fish­er­men, where­as they didn’t real­ly impact the big cor­po­ra­tions who con­tin­ued to over­fish. It made me want to tell a sto­ry in that com­mu­ni­ty, because it’s a dying way of life. Gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple have lived this way and it’s hard work and it’s dan­ger­ous, but it’s been a source of pride and now it’s going away.

Why did you choose Joni Mitchell’s ​‘Both Sides Now’ as Ruby’s audi­tion song?

If you hear Joni Mitchell being inter­viewed about that song, she calls it the end of her child­hood. I didn’t read that inter­view until after I made CODA. I love that she record­ed it when she was in her twen­ties and then again when she was 65, and it’s a total­ly dif­fer­ent song. She’s lived this whole life, and there’s loss, expe­ri­ence, and tragedy. It’s about being in two dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives at the same time, look­ing at some­thing from both sides, and I think that is the CODA experience.

What do you hope peo­ple will take away from CODA?

I hope that peo­ple are moved by the sto­ry and relate to it. I hope they take with them an expe­ri­ence of cul­ture that is dif­fer­ent from theirs and maybe feel more curios­i­ty and desire to build bridges between the hear­ing world and the Deaf world. I’ve heard from a lot of peo­ple that real­ly relate to the movie, from chil­dren of immi­grants who have spent a lot of their lives trans­lat­ing for their par­ents. I think our goal as sto­ry­tellers is to give peo­ple empa­thy for some­one else’s jour­ney. I hope that some­one leaves the movie and wants to learn ASL or thinks about peo­ple who might be on the fringes and should be brought into the centre.

CODA is released on Apple TV+ from 13 August.