Trailer

The premise

Twelve alien spacecraft appear over sites around the world. The US Army recruits linguist Louise Banks and physicist Ian Donnelly to go aboard the craft hovering over Montana and find a way to communicate with its seven-limbed occupants. They must also learn why the aliens have come, while international tensions push the world toward conflict.^[1]

Why it's in the catalogue

Our researcher classifies Arrival under this theme, using the site's inclusion criteria:

Time travel: A person, object or information physically or mentally moves to another point in time (machines, portals, magic, time slips, sending messages or consciousness to the past/future).

⚠ Spoiler: how the story uses timeShowHide

Borderline, included by project decision: no physical travel; information from the future reaches the present through Louise's non-linear perception of time (her 'visions' are memories of future events granted by learning the heptapod language).