At a Memphis movie house, romance sparks between Lincoln, an affluent white teenager, and Minh, the migrant son of a G.I. and a Vietnamese woman. But when they take a spontaneous trip down the Mississippi in Lincoln’s father’s boat, the two lovers soon uncover what they do not have in common.

Immersed in the tantalizing erotics of water and bathed in blue, Ira Sachs’s feature debut was a groundbreaking intervention into New Queer Cinema in the 1990s. Swirling race and class into the sultry pool of sexuality, The Delta cruises into quivering nights of threat, pleasure, and discovery.