CODA wins three Oscars including Best Picture!

CODA picked up awards for Best Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor.

Siân Heder's CODA script has won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. She adapted the script from the 2014 French film La Famille Bélier. The English-language remake centers on Emilia Jones as a teenager named Ruby. She is a CODA, the only hearing member of a Deaf family, who struggles to balance family obligations and her love of music. Heder insisted upon casting Deaf actors in the primary roles.

Troy Kotsur gave a heartfelt acceptance speech at the Academy Awards (video below with no audio) when he won for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his part in the movie CODA. Kotsur won equivalent honors at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, British Academy Film Awards and the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.

This is the first film distributed by a streaming service to win best picture. CODA became the first film since 1932 to win best picture without nominations for directing and editing.

The final minutes of the film includes a heart-to-heart talk between mother and daughter and then father and daughter. The LA Times reported that Teamsters working on the film cried during the filming of these emotional scenes. Heder told the Times the reaction was the result of impassioned signing:

“In order to sign with someone, you have to be fully engaged, looking at them face-to-face. And that connectedness, that engagement is something in Deaf culture that hearing culture lacks ... or, at least, is longing for. So when you see the Rossi family communicating and engaging in a way that’s so human and vibrant, you’re drawn in because they’re inhabiting what they’re saying with their facial expressions and even their bodies.