CODA Fixes The Original Movie’s Most Controversial Issue
The 2022 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, CODA, fixed a major problem with its source material, La Famille Bélier. CODA won Oscars in all three of the categories it was nominated for, including the coveted Best Picture award. However, the 2014 French-Belgian movie La Famille Bélier was less well-received by critics and audiences alike.
CODA follows the story of Ruby Rossi, a child of deaf adults who lived with her deaf parents, Frank and Jackie, and her brother Leo, who was also deaf. The film drew attention to the challenges faced by the Deaf community due to society failing to be inclusive. Leo, Frank, and Jackie were all played by deaf actors, including Troy Kotsur, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 2014 La Famille Bélier was mostly similar in its plot, but the producers unfortunately cast actors who were not deaf in most of its lead deaf roles.
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Distinguishing itself form the original La Famille Bélier, CODA has been praised for featuring deaf actors in three of its main roles, platforming authentic representation, and helping to ensure the authenticity of CODA's script. By casting deaf actors, CODA's use of sign language was accurate and effective. This helped to show the value of casting members of the Deaf community to portray their own lives as, in contrast, a report (via La Depeche) suggested that La Famille Bélier's implementation of sign language contained "a lot of blunders." The problems with La Famille Bélier were so dire that reports suggested that members of the Deaf community were forced to "read the subtitles, because they did not understand the signed language on the screen".
Casting actors
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