I don't know. I grew a lot as an artist making this movie because I think I tend to be pretty talky as a director, like with my actors.

And it was taken away as a toolkit and really needing to express what I needed from a performance through this different medium and through sign.

It was just, it was a really cool, amazing journey for me.

Hello and welcome back to The Director's Cut, brought to you by the Director's cut, brought to you by the Directors Guild of America.

Today's episode takes us behind the scenes of director Sean Hader's new musical drama, Coda.

The film follows Ruby, a child of deaf adults who is the only hearing person in her deaf family.

After the family fishing business is threatened, Rumi must choose between staying with her parents and leaving to pursue her love of music. In addition to Coda, Ms. Hader's other

directorial credits include the feature film, Tallulah, and episodes of the series Little

America, Blow, Orange is the New Black, and The Path.

Following a recent screening of the film at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, Ms. Hader spoke with fellow

director Susie Unessy about filming Kota. Listen on for their spoiler-filled conversation.

Hi, everyone.

And thank you, Sean, for that gorgeous, gorgeous film.

And I know you won the audience award at Sundance,

but I feel like us as a crowd, you having this theatrical experience,

I feel like we should give that standing ovation that you

probably would have gotten with the audience award. So masterfully done. So thank you. Really beautiful.

And thank you all for coming. I thought we could dive in and I wanted to start with a little bio of you since you've done so much and had such an incredible career.

So I wanted to give a couple of highlights for people in the room, which your first short film, which was through the directing women workshop. So it premiered at Can,

won an award there, which is super exciting. Your first feature premiered at Sundance in

dramatic competition. And then this film swept the awards at Sundance this past year winning the grand jury prize, a special jury

prize for the ensemble cast, a directing prize, and the audience awards. So such incredible work,

...