This film focuses on the only hearing member of a deaf family – and it has a noteworthy legacy
CODA first hit the headlines back in January when it won four major prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and was snapped up by Apple TV+ for a reported festival record of $25m (£18m).
Now the movie has been released on the streaming service and is likely to be one of their contenders come awards season, but it is the legacy it is leaving in terms of accessibility that is really noteworthy.
CODA stands for Child of Deaf Adults and the film centres on Ruby – the only hearing member of a deaf family – whose loyalties are torn when she discovers a passion for singing that could lead her away from the family home and business.
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The drama features deaf actors in many of the main roles, and much of its dialogue is shown through American Sign Language (ASL).
Writer and director Sian Heder told Sky News that in researching the project she quickly realised she was planning to do something that is rarely seen on screen.
“I wish I could say it was an easier ride,” Heder said.
“When I started writing the script, I went out and I was like, okay, I got to go find the deaf movies, and you’re looking for them and you’re going back to Children Of A Lesser God 30 years ago – which is Marlee Matlin’s Oscar-winning performance – but since then it’s just so few and far between, I could count them on one hand, the stories that portray deaf characters, especially in leading roles.
“[I was] looking for these portrayals and trying to find a pure ASL scene on screen where you’re watching characters relate in ASL and so it was interesting to sort of be heading into a bit of unknown territory where it was like: ‘Oh, there’s no roadmap for this, we’re going to discover this on our own.'”
Heder said that visiting the set of US show This Close – which was created by and stars deaf actors – helped her to understand what was needed to capture the story she’d written on film, and that she’s now hoping to set an example for other film-makers.
Marlee Matlin (right) appears in CODA. Pic: Apple
“Figuring out how many interpreters do we need to have on set and where do they need to be, and, you know, we have a vocal track – someone at the monitor who’s just speaking the lines into a track so the editor can cut those scenes.”
“Now I want to sort of share that information because I think people are daunted when they think about it – it’s like ‘how did you work with deaf actors?’ And I’m like, ‘actually it was really easy once we put the things in place to facilitate communication on set and make an accessible set.’
“But there isn’t really a way that it’s normally been done because it hasn’t been done very often.”
And it’s not just the on-screen action which is likely to have an impact on future film-making.
Apple have announced that CODA will be the first film ever to have burned-in subtitles, meaning that it will be accessible to anyone that wants to watch it.
Sian Heder says stories like CODA are rarely seen on screen. Pic: Appla
Matlin plays the main character’s mother in CODA, and says she was captivated by the project as soon as she read the script.
“I didn’t want anyone else to take it away, I wanted this role, the opportunity, and I thought this was a story that was a long time in coming that we really needed to share,” Matlin told Sky News.
“It had to do with deaf culture and sign language and on so many levels it was a universal story as well, it was the perfect vehicle for me as an actor to be involved.”
Matlin hopes that just as she did decades ago with Children of a Lesser God, this film will encourage audiences to realise stories about the deaf community can be relevant to anyone.
“I hope that people will be able to see – the same way they saw Children Of A Lesser God – they’ll be taken aback by seeing a deaf character, now we’re talking about several deaf characters carrying the film, that people will see now finally realising, oh, OK, there are thousands of stories, universal stories that are within the deaf community that need to be told and to be shared.
“The beauty of our culture, the beauty of our language, the beauty of our stories, as I said, just to remind people that we’re people just like everybody else, and we have wonderful stories to tell.”
Her husband in the film is played by deaf stage actor Troy Kotsur.
He is also the real-life father of a CODA who he admits “saw the parallels” between what happens in the film and their own family experiences.
Troy Kotsur (right) plays Matlin’s husband in CODA. Pic: Apple
Kotsur told Sky News that it’s difficult for hearing people to understand what it’s like being a CODA – his on-screen daughter Ruby is teased at school by teenagers who have no idea what her life is like.
“She had a hard time trying to articulate what it’s like growing up in a deaf family, nobody understands that,” he explained.
“And it’s different than a typical experience where you have a different spoken language – here with deaf culture and sign language she had to sign at home because that’s the language that we used as a family and then leaving home, she had to adapt and didn’t sign very much.
“The movie depicts her journey navigating between two separate worlds, and this is an opportunity to really share that with the viewers about what it’s like being a CODA.”
For Emilia Jones, who plays Ruby, landing the role meant learning ASL, learning to fish and having singing lessons for the first time.
But despite it sounding like a daunting list of tasks, the actress explained to Sky News that she relished the opportunity, and particularly enjoyed learning ASL which she did for nine months before getting to set, then more intensively with ASL Masters Alexandria Wailes and Anne Tomasetti.
Emilia Jones’ character discovers a passion for singing. Pic: Apple
Jones said: “I wanted to be pushed and I wanted to be challenged so they pushed me very hard.
“I guess it’s like when you’re learning French, you go and live in France and you learn so much more, so the minute I landed, I started intense training and then I met Troy, Daniel [Durant who plays her brother Leo] and Marlee and we kind of started rehearsals and we worked closely together, I just learnt so much faster.”
For Heder, seeing her the words she wrote come alive on screen via ASL was a process she describes as “incredible” – starting when she and ASL Master Alexandria Wailes went through the script line by line, long before they got on set.
Heder explained: “She would read the line of dialogue and she would talk to me about my intention with the line and the emotional state of the character and then she would give me her sign choices and say, ‘what do you think about this?’
“I remember there was a line where the sign for dead was kind of a passive sign [so I asked] ‘is there something more active – she’s really angry in this moment – that could kind of be sharper?’ And so the sign for ‘killing me’ was like a much more dynamic sign in that moment.
“And it was just the coolest process to go through line by line and discover together this completely visual language.”
CODA is in cinemas and available to stream on Apple TV_.
“You either hold a weapon or you hold a guitar,” says Raji El-Jaru, Gaza’s biggest rockstar.
Months before war broke out last year, hundreds of people packed into a concert hall to hear his band perform their distinct blend of pounding guitar riffs and impassioned lyrics.
“We’ll scream our pain; can you hear the call?” he sang to the rapt crowd. “Knock, knock, are you listening at all?”
Not long after that gig, Israeli airstrikes rained on Gaza City, tearing down buildings and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Focused on survival rather than music, the five members of Osprey V – believed to be Gaza’s first rock band – went from dreaming of gigging in Europe to wondering if they would ever play together again.
Formed back in 2015, the group are all self-taught and cite Metallica and Linkin Park among their influences. Raji, 32, explains that he has always seen rock music as the obvious way to resist oppression. “We are the voice of the voiceless, spreading love instead of hatred and violence.”
Live from Kyiv: Volodomyr aka Lostlojic. Pic: Oleksandra Poparova
“It’s a matter of time now,” Volodymyr says, talking about when his name will be called to join Ukraine’s armed forces.
A DJ who goes by the moniker Lostlojic, before the full-scale invasion in 2022 he was flying around Europe playing his brand of electronic music but now he’s back in Kyiv, his hometown, performing to raise money for his friends on the frontline.
In the early days after the invasion there was discussion about whether club nights should continue, says 35-year-old Volodymyr, but people needed a break from thinking about war – not least the soldiers on leave from the battlefield.
“Many of my friends who are musicians are in the armed forces. They have no time to do their favourite thing. Once every few months they create some tracks, send them to me, and I play them out.”
Last weekend there was a day to celebrate the Ukrainian language, and Volodymyr incorporated samples of Ukrainian speech into his songs to mark it – an assertion of an identity that is under threat.
“Everything is about politics, you can’t be an artist without it.”
Ruth Daniel spoke about the role of music in conflict zones at Womex. Pic: Jacob Crawfurd
“One of the things that music can do is unify people,” says Ruth Daniel. “It’s a way to give people a space to share what they’re going through.”
She is head of In Place Of War, an organisation that helps foster music and creativity in conflict zones. When bombs are falling all around you, she believes, music can act as a form of escapism and creative resistance.
Speaking to Sky News from the recent WOMEX (Worldwide Music Expo) conference in Manchester, she described how smartphones and social media make it easier than ever for those in conflict zones to write tracks and find an audience.
“I’ve seen people making music studios on the edge of checkpoints, making their own instruments, doing hip hop on street corners and making music with car sound systems.”
Gigs too, can be held anywhere, she says, giving an example of a club night she went to in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah.
“It was at a house – they basically turned the kitchen into a club. I remember leaving and there were lines and lines of police and army [soldiers] pointing guns.
“For me, the best music comes out of situations of difficulty. It’s not just art for art’s sake, it’s art with purpose and meaning.”
One of Mo Aziz’s band members was recently killed in Sudan. Pic: Livv Edwards
Mo Aziz once performed to tens of thousands of people in stadiums across Sudan as part of the popular group Igd al-Jalad. But the group’s music criticised the then-government and they were banned from performing amid a crackdown on expression.
He came to the UK as a refugee in 2017, and this year released an album calling for peace in his homeland and hoping to raise the profile of Sudanese music – traditionally a blend of African and Arabic influences.
Since the struggle for power between the army and a large militia group erupted into armed conflict in April 2023, more than 20,000 people have been killed in Sudan. There are firefights on the streets of Khartoum and a humanitarian crisis.
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Mo’s mother and brother fled to Egypt, making a fortnight-long journey to escape the conflict, as the fighting led to millions being displaced.
“I was devastated,” he said. “I lost three friends as a result of the bombing in Khartoum, including one member of Igdal-Jalad.”
This unfolded as Mo was working on his album and master’s degree at Liverpool Hope University.
“I hope to show what’s happening in Sudan as well as uplift Sudanese music and put it on the international scene,” he said. “I will always dedicate my work to peace and human rights.”
Saeed Gadir seeks to tell stories through his music. Pic: Sequoia Ziff
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Meanwhile, British-Sudanese folk singer-songwriter Saeed Gadir described the music scene in Khartoum as a “ghost town”.
“It’s really been decimated, there’s no one there. It’s a huge part of my writing,” says Saeed, who’s known as The Halfway Kid and whose new album Myths In Modern Life talks about growing up in a Sudanese migrant family.
And while he doesn’t see himself as always being explicitly political, his music is nonetheless politicised by the stories he tells and feelings he seeks to share with his audiences, he says.
“Even if you’re in London, you might get an insight into what it might feel like if there’s a coup back home.”
Read more:
Gaza situation ‘disastrous’ – UN
Millions of Sudanese displaced by war now face a new fight
Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson in Sarajevo in 1994. Pic: Reuters
Sometimes there is no safe way to explore music in a dangerous place, sometimes the bombs are falling around you even as amps are plugged in and microphones set up.
That was the case in 1994, before the internet gave musicians the power to appear virtually to their fans. Back then, legendary metal singer Bruce Dickinson and his band Skunkworks were smuggled into Sarajevo during the Bosnian War while the city was under siege. The gig they played instantly became historic.
“I’d never seen devastation like it in a modern city. There wasn’t a single building that wasn’t a burnt-out shell,” Dickinson, best known as the lead singer of Iron Maiden, told the 2017 documentary Scream For Me Sarajevo.
The siege of Sarajevo was the longest in modern history, lasting nearly four years. More than 11,000 people, including over 1,000 children, were killed.
“I went out there and was just, like, how can I ever be as big as their lives need me to be for them?” recalled Dickinson.
“You could have given everything and you just felt like it wasn’t ever gonna be enough.”
Raji El-Jaru and his band have a new video coming out soon. Pic: Mohammed Al Nateel
All over the world, the musical tradition of building community – and resistance – in some of the world’s most dangerous places is thriving, thanks in part to social media and the ability to reach audiences around the world with live streams.
“Especially in places where people can’t get out or people can’t go in,” Ruth says. “And so that becomes the most important way of sharing people’s culture and identities.”
Still unable to return home, Raji has continued his work on Osprey V. A new video, produced in the Gaza Strip, is out soon and he hopes it will be a wakeup call to the West.
“We are normal people just like you,” he says. “We have families, we drink coffee, we wear Adidas. But we are suffering from endless wars.”
Life in between filming the first and second series of The Old Man has been vastly different for Jeff Bridges.
The Oscar-winning actor led the first season of the action thriller at 70, seemingly healthy and ready to take on the world. However, unbeknown to him at the time, he had undiagnosed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and a 9×12 inch tumour in his stomach, which would require intense treatment.
Rather than the often used language of “fighting” the cancer, Bridges described himself as being “in surrender mode” as he not only went through chemotherapy but also contracted COVID-19.
Jeff Bridges returns in The Old Man. Pic: Kurt Iswarienko/FX/Disney+
However, he set himself the goal of walking his daughter down the aisle, which he did in 2021, and has since said his tumour has been reduced to “the size of a marble”.
Now, The Big Lebowski actor has returned to the small screen for the second season of Disney+ show The Old Man, which tells the story of a former CIA operative on the run and also stars Conclave’s John Lithgow and Blink Twice actress Alia Shawkat.
John Lithgow (right) co-stars alongside Bridges. Pic: Kurt Iswarienko/FX/Disney+
Despite a vast career in film, this is Bridges’ first time leading a TV series – a format he saw his father Lloyd Bridges excel in when he was a child.
“With movies, you have a beginning, middle and an end,” he tells Sky News. “You know where you’re going. That’s not the case in the series, it’s exciting.”
The American actor says he makes an effort to instil “joy” and kindness on his sets, crediting his father’s love for the art of acting for why he remains so positive.
“I mean, he taught me all the basics of acting and he, unlike a lot of parents who are in showbiz, wanted all his kids to go into showbusiness. He loved it so much.”
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Bridges has appeared on screen since he was just six months old and would leave school to join his father on the set of his series.
“The way he approached his work with such joy [was admirable] and that was the main thing I learned from him… Whenever he came on the set, that joy was kind of contagious and everybody would say, hey, this is kind of fun, what we’re doing to get to play, dance, pretend here with all these great folks and we can have a good time.”
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Bridges says he was lucky to work with his father a few times as an adult and that the ability to create a relaxing and fun environment that allowed artists to flourish was something he wanted to replicate in his own work.
On set, he meets with every creative taking part in his films and shows, from costume designers to the production team.
“That’s such an important aspect of my work, getting a perspective from their take… all these things start to come together and they have a cumulative effect on how your character comes off, and they’re thinking of it from a completely different point of view.
“That’s very valuable to me, you know, to hear the history, why the person got that particular piece of clothing and what not.”
Season two of The Old Man is available to stream on Disney+ from 6 November.
Entertainment
Ed Sheeran beats copyright appeal over claim Thinking Out Loud ripped off Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On
An appeals court has upheld a ruling that Ed Sheeran’s hit song Thinking Out Loud did not illegally copy the Marvin Gaye classic, Let’s Get It On.
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, New York, agreed with a lower-court judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Structured Asset Sales (SAS), which owns rights to the 1973 Gaye song that previously belonged to the late co-writer Ed Townsend.
SAS had made the allegations against Sheeran, his record label Warner Music, and music publisher Sony Music Publishing.
Ed Sheeran attended court in New York in 2023 for a hearing on a separate lawsuit about the same track, which he won. Pic: AP
It comes after a separate copyright lawsuit filed by heirs of Townsend over alleged similarities between the tracks. Sheeran won that case in May 2023, following a jury trial.
SAS sued Sheeran in 2018, four years after the release of his number one hit. US District Judge Louis Stanton dismissed the case following the verdict in the heirs’ case last year – concluding the musical elements allegedly copied were too common to merit copyright protection.
The appeals court has now agreed, saying Thinking Out Loud and Let’s Get It On are not similar enough for Sheeran to have infringed on copyright, and protecting the elements could stifle creativity.
SAS owner, investment banker David Pullman, said the company was reviewing all of its options following the decision.
Gaye, who died in 1984, collaborated with Townsend, who died in 2003, to write Let’s Get It On, which topped the Billboard charts in the year it was released. The track has been used in numerous films and adverts, and garnered hundreds of millions of streams and radio plays in the past 50 years.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Sheeran, who is from Suffolk, is one of the most successful modern music stars in the world. Thinking Out Loud, which won a Grammy for song of the year in 2016, is among his biggest hits.
Sky News has contacted representatives for the star for comment on the latest ruling.
After the result in 2023, he spoke outside court, saying he was “unbelievably frustrated baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all”.
He added: “We’ve spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day, all over the world.”
The British star, 33, also won a similar copyright case in the UK in 2022 – this one relating to Shape Of You, another of his biggest hits.
During that hearing, he was accused by two lesser-known songwriters of ripping off part of one of their songs for his 2017 track. However, the High Court judge ruled that Sheeran “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied a hook from the song.
Following that ruling, Sheeran released a video statement hitting out at “baseless” copyright claims that are “damaging” to the industry.
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