It’s nearly a year since Oscar-winning actor Jennifer Lawrence graced our screens in Netflix’s smash hit apocalyptic satire Don’t Look Up, and frankly, her presence has been very much missed. Whether she’s playing a grieving young widow or a tenacious astronomy PhD student, she imbues every role with power, charisma and a no-holds-barred attitude, proving exactly why she’s one of the best actors in the business.

But the wait will have been worth it, because next month, Lawrence returns in Apple TV+’s Causeway, a sensitive new drama about a war veteran trying to rebuild her life after returning from Afghanistan with a debilitating brain injury.

Directed by Lila Neugebauer, who has previously worked on episodes of The Sex Lives Of College Girls, Maid and Room 104 and co-written by Ottessa Moshfegh, the acclaimed novelist behind My Year Of Rest And Relaxation, the film follows Lynsey, a former military engineer who is suffering from a brain injury after a vehicle was destroyed by a roadside bomb.

When she returns home to New Orleans, Lynsey faces a painful and slow recovery as she relearns to walk and retrains her memory, aided by a chatty but tender caretaker (Jayne Houdyshell).

While Lynsey is desperate to return to her work as an engineer, her doctor (Stephen McKinley Henderson) is wary, and so in the meantime, she gets a job cleaning pools.

But moving back in with her mother (Linda Emond), with whom she shares a tense relationship, she has to face memories even more aching and formative than those she had in service: a reckoning with her childhood.

As she tries to heal and determine her new direction in life, Lynsey forges a friendship with James (Brian Tyree Henry), a local mechanic who is struggling with his own past trauma. As the pair forge a friendship, they slowly start to rely on each other for company and solace on their journey to recovery.

Described as “a quiet but devastating, and ultimately uplifting, story about coming to terms and moving forward”, Causeway, which is a collaboration between Apple and A24, also marks the first film produced by Lawrence’s production company Excellent Cadaver. 

It’s a personal project for Lawrence too, who explained her connection to the story at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.

“I felt something in my gut when I read this; that immediate ‘we have to make this’ [feeling]. I identify with that feeling of trying to find your home, to find where you have purpose,” she said onstage at the premiere, according to Entertainment Weekly. “I left home when I was 14. My relationship with home has always been complicated.”

Happily, Lawrence’s screen renaissance is only just beginning. After working together for Don’t Look Up, the actor is reuniting with director Adam McKay for Apple TV+’s upcoming film Bad Blood, playing disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. You just know it’s going to be good, right?

Causeway debuts in cinemas and on Apple TV+ on 4 November.

Images: Apple TV+