Eleanor Arroway works for SETI and starts receiving intelligent-life radio signals. She spends a great deal of time fighting bureaucracy and obtaining funding to receive and decipher what is being received.

Eventually, an alien-engineered sphere is created to send one of the characters on a journey of some sort. A sphere that gets blown up by a radical religious nut. Luckily for Eleanor, a private financier had another one built as a backup. She takes a journey, but no one believes her when she returns because the sphere merely drops from the platform. At the end, we learn the U.S. government knows it wasn't a hoax due to many hours of blank tape.

The movie touches on what effects the discovery of an alien race would have on society and worldwide religion. From what I gathered, it doesn't make a mockery out of either science or religion. It's a very interesting movie, from start to finish.

Starring Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Skerritt, with notable appearances by James Woods and Jake Busey, and a large cast. Here's the trailer: