Dr. Isaac Bruno, Patrick J. Adams, holds a postdoctoral fellowship in astrophysics at a fictional Ontario university in Toronto, where his quest to detect signs of intelligent life has become an all-consuming mission grounded in a private trauma from two years past. This fixation has left him increasingly hostile toward students and colleagues, and it culminates in him misappropriating time on ground-based telescopes in Chile that were meant for a peer’s research. The department head, Jennifer Dale, ultimately suspends him, cutting him off from the school’s facilities and forcing him to confront the consequences of his unyielding approach.
Meanwhile, the TESS orbiting telescope is launched, churning out vast streams of data that invite a global, collaborative effort to hunt for life on distant worlds. In this wave of open science, Isaac posts flyers seeking an unpaid research assistant, offering nothing but room and board in return. The lone applicant is Clara, Troian Bellisario, an uneducated artist who has lived a Bohemian life and carries her own hidden burdens, including medicine for an illness that isn’t fully explained.
Isaac fixates on M dwarf stars, convinced that this narrow niche will slip past the attention of others. When Clara discovers a promising exoplanet, Isaac covertly returns to the university at night and lies to the telescope operators in Chile, claiming permission from his old friend Charlie to obtain more data on the planet. Charlie, Ennis Esmer, is furious yet intrigued by what the data could mean; he urges Isaac to reach out to Rebecca, Isaac’s ex-wife, who holds an endowed chair at Caltech, and Clara pushes Isaac to make the connection.
Rebecca Jenkins, Kristen Hager, tells Isaac that discovering life won’t repair the losses of their dead baby son. Yet she agrees to give him time on the Keck telescope, and the breakthrough follows: a habitable-planet candidate is within reach. Clara grows close to Isaac, and she offers him a fragile glimpse of love, even as he remains cautious, convinced that anything meaningful must be proven by data and not by feeling. They share a kiss, but Isaac pulls away, wary of hope and the possibility of heartbreak.
After a hospital delivery for Charlie’s wife, Isaac bluntly muses that the universe is a “cosmic accident”—a string of luck that could just as easily strand any given being. Clara counters with a deeper view of possibility: the atoms that constitute his dead son still exist, merely transformed, and their connection endures in a broader sense. Her perspective nudges Isaac toward openness, and the two become a couple, choosing to nurture their bond even as the search for life intensifies.
When they learn that another group has already located the planet they were pursuing, Isaac’s mood dips before he renews his focus on detecting signs of an evolved civilization that could be altering its planet’s environment. He wants not merely a home world, but evidence of intelligent life shaping its surroundings. Clara’s health begins to slip as the strain of his obsession grows, and Charlie challenges Isaac to reassess his priorities. In a gesture of trust, Clara asks Isaac to map the universe using the newly released TESS data and to select a star by intuition rather than by the data’s blind scope. He chooses a spot on the map that lies outside the current dataset, but their moment of anger—Isaac accusing Clara of planning to leave him—hurts her deeply, and she collapses when she tries to leave.
In the hospital, doctors reveal that Clara suffers from an autoimmune disease that has been slowly degrading her organs and muscles; yet she remains physically capable enough to speak and walk, a testament to a stubborn resilience. Isaac stays by her bedside as her condition worsens, and just before she dies she whispers a final, intimate line to him: “I wish I could see your face when you see it.”
A new batch of TESS data later arrives, and Isaac discovers that the star he once avoided is now swarmed by data revealing anomalies in its companion’s orbit—an artificial object clearly maintained by an intelligent hand. He presents his findings to Charlie, who introduces him to Dr. Rickman, the head of the TESS project. Two years pass, and at a high-profile JPL press conference, Rickman, Rebecca, and Charlie declare that the evidence now proves the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy. Isaac, however, is not in his assigned seat; he sits apart, lost in memory of Clara.
Months later, Rebecca invites Isaac to the SETI laboratory, where a message from the aliens arrives in Morse code addressed to “Isaac Bruno.” He witnesses the next transmission—a sound file of a Bob Dylan song he and Clara used to listen to together. The film closes on Isaac’s face, torn between tears and a quiet, hopeful smile, as he murmurs the final, grateful acknowledgment: “Thank you.”
