Helmed by first-time director Lila Neugebauer (Broadway’s The Waverly Gallery, Netflix’s Maid, The Last Thing He Told Me), the film features the Oscar winner as Lynsey, a military engineer who has returned to the States from Afghanistan with a debilitating brain injury.

The Atlanta and Bullet Train star plays James, a stranger who offers her a ride home and is also suppressing his own past trauma. The two begin to seek out each other’s company as they provide solace to each other on their journey to recovery.

Lawrence last appeared in McKay’s Don’t Look Up for Netflix and will reteam with McKay for Apple’s Bad Blood, playing disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Her last big theatrical feature film was 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

In Causeway, Lawrence as Lynsey faces painful and slow recovery from an injury sustained after an IED explosion.

But when she returns home to New Orleans, she has to face memories even more aching and formative than those she had in service: a reckoning with her childhood. When she meets James, the two damaged souls’ budding friendship forms the heart of Neugebauer’s debut feature — described as “a quiet but devastating, and ultimately uplifting, story about coming to terms and moving forward.”

Causeway also marks the first film produced by Lawrence’s production company Excellent Cadaver.

The film began production in 2019, before shutting down amid the pandemic and resuming in 2021.

In recent Vogue profile, the Winter’s Bone actress said about her new character: “Her untenable home, her inability to commit to one thing or another because of these internal injuries that are completely invisible but huge — I think I connected with that at that specific time in my life. So much was going on with me at that time that I didn’t realize. Until I was back, pregnant, married, making it. And I was just like, ‘Oh, this is a woman who is scared to commit.’”

The film world premiered at the 2022 Toronto Film Fest to good response.