Maternal Instinct is a true-crime documentary directed by Jessica Dimmock about a 2020 Texas case in which a woman was stopped by police while claiming a newborn in her possession was hers. The facts quickly told a different story. Dimmock builds the film around interviews with victims' families and investigators, keeping the focus on the human cost of the deception rather than any ideological argument. The Leans Traditional label follows from that approach. The film treats the biological mother-child bond as something close to sacred, and its violation as the central horror. No identity politics, no systemic framing, just a community confronting a crime that cut against the deepest assumptions people hold about motherhood.