Like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Starman, Independence Day, and a host of similar films over the past 30 years, Arrival explores the theme of an alien visitation to earth.
In this iteration, Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) is a linguistic expert, who is called upon by the U.S. military to facilitate conversation with visitors from another world, whose space-crafts have landed (actually not quite landed, for they hover a few feet off the ground) at a number of locations around the globe.