CODA had its world premiere on January 28, 2021, at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where Apple acquired its distribution rights for a festival-record $25 million.

It received largely positive reviews from critics, who praised Heder's screenplay and Kotsur's performance, although feedback from deaf viewers was polarized.

In Gloucester, Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Ruby Rossi is the only hearing member of her family; her parents, Frank and Jackie, and older brother, Leo, are all deaf.

Meanwhile, Frank and Leo struggle to make ends meet with the fishing business as new fees and sanctions are imposed by the local board.

During the yelling, Frank announces that he is going to start his own company to get around the new restrictions and intends to sell his fish on his own, inviting other local fishermen to join him.

Ruby is nervous and unprepared at first, but after Mr. V deliberately makes a mistake on his accompaniment, she's allowed to start again and gains confidence when she sees her family.

CODA, written and directed by Sian Heder, is an English-language remake of the French-language film La Famille Bélier, which was released in 2014 and was successful at the French box office.

[11] To prepare for the film, Heder observed a fish processing plant and consulted the local harbormaster about how authorities would raid a boat.

She received feedback from director Kenneth Lonergan—who directed the 2016 film Manchester by the Sea, which was set in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts[13]—and members of the fishing-industry nonprofit Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association.

And it's strange because studios clearly have the ability to greenlight a film and cast whomever they want, and there continues to be a lack of awareness that you can tell universal stories with deaf characters.

[13] In the film, the family lives in what WBUR's The ARTery described as a "creaky clapboard cottage [with] a yard jammed with boats, traps, and nets".

The choirmaster's home was a Victorian-style house on the sea, where Heder had visited family friends multiple times in her childhood, and they allowed her to film there.

[13] Marius de Vries composed the film's soundtrack and compiled and co-produced the album with Nicholai Baxter, featuring the original score and incorporated songs.

[18] Most of the incorporated songs in the film were recorded live and sung by the lead actors Emilia Jones and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, accompanied by the CODA choir, who were students at Berklee College of Music and Gloucester High School.

[13] The film received "immediate rave reviews", according to Agence France Presse, which highlighted the positive comments from Variety and Deadline Hollywood.

[25] IndieWire wrote, "[Heder] has reportedly crafted a crowd-pleasing tearjerker whose commercial promise will easily spark a bidding war between theatrical distributors and deep-pocketed streamers.

"[26] USA Today summarized the reception, "Propelled by its powerful inclusivity of the deaf community, it's a refreshing reboot of the traditional teen romance and coming-of-age story.

[38] Benjamin Lee's Guardian-based three-star review offered this summary: "Coda is a mostly likable concoction, but one that's just too formulaic and ultimately rather calculated to secure the emotional response it so desperately wants by the big finale.

"[39] Writing for The New York Times, editor Jeannette Catsoulis wrote, "An openhearted embrace of deaf culture elevates this otherwise conventional tale of a talented teenager caught between ambition and loyalty".

[40] Variety's Owen Gilberman stated that Sian Heder had got the gift, "the holy essence of how to shape and craft a drama that spins and burbles and flows".

[41] The Hollywood Reporter's Jon Frosch opined that "CODA faithfully works its way through a checklist of tropes from high school comedies, disability dramas, musical-prodigy and inspiring-teacher narratives, coming-of-age tales about young people struggling to declare independence from overbearing families and indie chronicles of blue-collar America.

"[42] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post called it an "old-fashioned movie that adheres to admittedly familiar principles of storytelling and emotional stakes, but by way of such a winning cast, evocative atmosphere and genuine tone that its impossible not to love".

But by twisting the formula and placing this recognizable story inside a new, perhaps even groundbreaking setting with such loving, acutely observed specificity, she pulls off nothing short of a heartwarming miracle with her film.

[45] In contrast, Tim Robey, writing for The Telegraph, criticized it as "dramedy that could have taken more risks", and added, "Heder's script makes every easy and rigged choice available, reducing far too many of the family dynamics to the level of a bickering sitcom."

Comparing it with the Darius Marder-directed Sound of Metal (2020), which he called "a genuinely adventurous, formally experimental take on deaf issues", he wrote that CODA "feels too cute by half".

Deaf writer Sara Nović also said, "I liked that these characters were sexual beings—deaf and disabled people are often neutered or virginal in movies and books, and that's extremely boring and inaccurate.

[50][51] Lennard J. Davis, a CODA and disability scholar, wrote, "this genre of films is glued to a different reality: it is as if birds were obsessed with making movies in which humans were miserable about their inability to fly.

CODA is the most recent example of such a sleeper hit and one of the most crowd-pleasing movies of the 2020s...this small family drama that was filled with light-hearted moments won over so many people and left plenty of tears in their eyes.

"[4] MovieWeb ranked it number 15 on its list of the "20 Most Underrated Films of the Last 5 Years," writing that "it certainly deserves way more credit" and called it "groundbreaking in its representation of disability.

[60] The film was also given the Seal of Authentic Representation from the Ruderman Family Foundation for Matlin's and Durant's roles as Ruby's mother and brother.