River Rose

Mystery, horror, and Southern folklore collide in the 1990s when a video store worker discovers chilling secrets found in her missing sister's documentary series, Southern Scares.

A queer metaphysical love story that weaves itself through real and imagined sexual encounters across darkrooms, forest cruising zones and highway shoulders. In these fantastical playgrounds, bodies are free to imagine themselves in a multiplicity of forms as they encounter other bodies without preconceived notions of what those other bodies desire, what they will need, and how they should be touched. While trusting the energetic attraction of bodies towards each other and learning through the encounter, INSTINCT simultaneously asks: what does it mean for a queer body to actively (un)learn what it might assume about another body's sex, gender, and desire?