← All Movies

Contact

Astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway arrives at the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The film's prologue reveals that she was encouraged to pursue science by her father, who died in her youth. In the film's present, Arroway studies radio emissions from space to detect signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. While in Puerto Rico, Arroway meets Christian philosopher, Palmer Joss. They have a brief romantic encounter, but Arroway does not contact him again.

David Drumlin, the President's science advisor, cuts SETI funding, deeming it futile. Arroway is furious and instead pursues and receives financial support from S. R. Hadden, a reclusive billionaire industrialist. Arroway re-locates her team to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio dish observatory in New Mexico.

Four years later, Arroway is about to lose access to the VLA satellite dishes. Before being evicted, she discovers a signal containing a sequence of prime numbers originating from the star Vega. Drumlin and the National Security Council, headed by Michael Kitz, arrive and attempt to federalize the facility. Meanwhile, Arroway's team detect a video embedded within the signal: Adolf Hitler 's opening address at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. The Hitler transmission was the first to penetrate the Earth's ionosphere and reach Vega.

The project is put under federal security and its progress is monitored globally. It is discovered that the signal contains over 63,000 pages of encoded data, though it is undecipherable without a primer. Hadden breaches the government's computer systems and discovers the primer, providing Arroway the means to decode the data. It reveals schematics for what could be a transportation device for a single person. Multiple nations provide funding for the construction at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

An international panel is assembled to select a candidate to travel in the machine. An American is preferred, and Arroway is a leading candidate until Palmer Joss, a panel member, focuses on her atheism during the interviews. The panel selects Drumlin. During the first tests, a fanatical religious terrorist destroys the machine with a suicide bomb, killing Drumlin and several others. Hadden, terminally ill with cancer, is now residing on the Mir space station. He informs Arroway that the US government and Hadden Industries have secretly built a second machine in Hokkaido, Japan. Arroway, the only remaining American candidate, will use it.

In Japan, Joss and Arroway are reunited. Joss explains he voted against Arroway because he feared she would not survive the experiment. Equipped with multiple recording devices, Arroway enters a pod which is dropped through the massive machine's counter-rotating rings. She seemingly travels through wormholes and observes a radio array-like structure at Vega, signs of civilization on an alien planet, and a celestial event. Arroway finds herself on a beach similar to her childhood drawing of Pensacola, Florida. An alien assuming her deceased father's appearance approaches. He explains that the aliens detected humans' radio emissions and judged it worthy of a first step into the cosmos. Arroway is soon sent back through the wormhole.

Arroway regains consciousness inside the pod. The mission control team reports that the pod fell through the machine into a safety net and that the experiment achieved nothing. Arroway insists she was gone for hours, but her devices recorded only static. A Congressional Committee headed by Kitz speculates the signal and the machine were a hoax perpetrated by Hadden, now deceased. Arroway admits she cannot scientifically prove her experience and requests the committee accept her testimony on faith.

Joss tells the press that he believes Arroway's claim, and they leave the hearing together. Kitz and White House official Rachel Constantine discuss the confidential information and observe that Arroway's device recorded 18 hours of static. Arroway receives ongoing financial support for the SETI program at the VLA.