As Sicario was building considerable buzz last year, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve was already busy readying his next project, which would mark his first foray into the sci-fi realm: Arrival. Previously titled Story of Your Life, the film is billed as an intellectual sci-fi drama “with a genre twist”, and while the picture has been kept firmly under wraps for quite some time, the first images have been unveiled ahead of the film’s premiere on the fall film festival circuit.

Arrival stars Amy Adams as a linguist who is hired by the U.S. government to decipher an extraterrestrial language when a series of alien pods materialize in the atmosphere and hover mysteriously near the ground. Villeneuve, who also directed the well-received 2013 crime drama Prisoners, opts for a much more dramatic approach here, with co-star Jeremy Renner—who plays a physicist—likening the film to a mix between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, telling USA Today:

“If you’re a parent, it’s going to wreck you. It’s big and there are thriller elements and tension, but it’s going to lean much more into a thinking person’s film.”

The film will serve as a sci-fi warm-up for Villeneuve’s next picture, which is the highly anticipated Blade Runner sequel, but as a huge fan of Sicario I’m really looking forward to his dramatic take on the sci-fi genre. Moreover, Selma and A Most Violent Year cinematographer Bradford Young shot Arrival, which is yet another reason to be excited.

Check out the first Arrival images below. The trailer is expected to arrive tomorrow. After making the fall film festival circuit at Venice, Toronto, and possibly Telluride, Arrival will hit theaters on November 11th. The film also stars Forest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg.