How a new film about a deaf family portrays the migrant experience

By Antonio Conde - NBC News

Mexican actor, director and producer Eugenio Derbez has become renowned beyond his country for his roles in Hollywood comedies such as 

No Returns Accepted (Instructions Not Included)

.

Now he hopes that moviegoers will be inspired by his role in the new film

CODA: Signs of the Heart

, where he plays a music teacher helping a 17-year-old to use her voice.

The protagonist, Ruby Rossi (played by

Locke & Key's

Emilia Jones

), is the only one in her family who is not deaf, and

acts as the translator

for her family in different settings.

But what she wants is to be a singer, and that could mean moving to a place away from her parents and brother to do it.

"I think we all know kids who want to be something else: many people have that battle between what they are passionate about and what their parents want them to be," says Derbez in an interview with NBC News, the sister network of Noticias Telemundo.

Derbez adds that

CODA: Signs of the heart, 

available on Apple TV +, thus shows a

crossroads that is experienced by many families, including Latinas

in the US CODA refers both to the acronym for

child of deaf adults, 

son of deaf parents, like a musical epilogue.

"I think many people are going to feel reflected by that experience of someone, in this case Ruby, who wants to discover her voice and place in the world but is

torn between doing that and helping her family,

" says the actor.

Ruby wakes up at 3:00 in the morning to help her family on their fishing boat.

She translates for her parents and brother, who use sign language, at doctor's appointments, at the grocery store, and at other times in everyday life.

Derbez said that this element of the story will echo especially for those migrant families of parents who do not speak English and need their sons and daughters to translate for them for paperwork, or to help them from the early morning in jobs in industries such as agriculture.

Emilia Jones and Troy Kotsur play father and daughter in "CODA: Signs of the Heart", available on Apple TV + in the United States and which will be released in Latin American theaters. Apple

Derbez's role is school choir teacher Bernando Villaobos, who urges Ruby to apply for a scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music.

The role also follows a career path with which Derbez has sought to

promote more diverse portraits of Latinos in the US

and the rest of the continent.

He is one of the actors who wants to change the perspective of Latino people who only appear in television series or in movies as criminals, drug traffickers or cleaning personnel.

A call for inclusion

The

CODA 

film 

won four awards at the Sundance Film Festival and has received rave reviews since its premiere.

For many people, the film's path to success is an opportunity for the stories of people with disabilities to reach a wider audience as well.

Evelyn Peña, president and CEO of the group Deaf Latinos y Familias, says that visibility through these Hollywood portraits is important but that it is necessary to go further.

The organization he runs, based in South Los Angeles, teaches American Sign Language in Spanish to parents of boys and girls who are deaf to some degree.

Peña herself is the mother of a 26-year-old young man, Richard Peña, who is deaf.

"Visibility matters, but it is a very small element of what Latino families in the deaf community need," Peña tells NBC News.

"We need more accessible adaptation.

Be it a commercial or a news report, we need someone to interpret it. There are many people for whom sign language is the mother tongue and they cannot always read all the subtitles," he adds.

Eugenio Derbez plays the character Bernardo Villalobos, director of a school choir, in "CODA: Signs of the heart".

Courtesy of Apple

"At the end of the day, the goal of a Latino family where someone is deaf and they speak Spanish and English is that they also learn sign language," he explains.

"That is why we teach them ASL in Spanish, so that they can teach their children the Latin culture in the language they understand. And also so their children can teach them the deaf culture," adds Peña.

Eugenio Derbez, meanwhile, said that 

CODA: Signs of the heart 

manages to capture in this way the diversity of these learning and family experiences.