Directed by Raven Jackson
Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.
Всі ґрунтові дороги мають присмак солі, Todos los caminos de tierra saben a sal, 土路都有盐味道, A föld íze a számban, 土路都有鹽味道, Polne drogi mają smak soli, Todas as Estradas de Terra têm Gosto de Sal, Все грунтовые дороги имеют привкус соли, Prašné cesty chutnají po soli, 올 더트 로드 테이스트 오브 솔트, Toate drumurile miros a sare
USA Sundance Film Festival 
Spain Donostia-San Sebastián International Film Festival USA Charlotte Film Festival USA Nashville Film Festival USA New York Film Festival 
UK BFI London Film Festival USA New Hampshire Film Festival USA Chicago International Film Festival USA Twin Cities Film Festival / Montclair Film Festival USA Indie Memphis Film Festival / Philadelphia Film Festival USA AFI Fest / SCAD Savannah Film Festival USA Denver Film Festival 
Poland American Film Festival 
Greece Thessaloniki International Film Festival 
Sweden Göteborg Film Festival USA Milwaukee Film Festival 
Australia Melbourne International Film Festival USAPG 
Japan 
Brazil 
Puerto RicoPG USAPG Australia Brazil Greece Japan Poland Puerto Rico Spain Sweden UK USA 
A memory, tinged with aching rawness, emerges in “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” the feature debut by writer/director Raven Jackson. This memory briefly foretells the knotting stream of remembrances that roots our protagonist, Mack (played in these early childhood scenes by a sage Kaylee Nicole Johnson). It begins in 1970, with young Mack’s hands caressing a fish’s scales before throwing the suffocated creature back into the glinting water. It then jumps to her hands softly holding a fishing reel, its pole stretched across the frame. Her father, Isaiah (Chris Chalk), calmly guides her toward the catch. The director then steers us to a shot of Mack’s fingers swirling in the cloudy silt around the river’s current, and finally to…
"You wanna know a secret? It doesn't end or begin, it just changes form."
a beautiful and tender piece of poetry that has changed the way i see hands forever
A whispered symphony of sense memories that cycles through the decades like rain water — heavy with images and ambient sounds that trickle down from the generations above before they’re absorbed into the earth and suffused back into the air — the vague but vividly rendered “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” runs a little drier every time writer-director Raven Jackson loops back to squeeze another drop of meaning from the textures and traditions that connect a Black Mississippi woman to the place where she was born (and vice-versa).
Her name is Mackenzie, she’s played by a small troupe of different actresses over the course of Jackson’s freeform debut, and the body they share between them serves as a kind…
Hands are what connect us with the world; they are our main mode of association, not just with one another but with everything that surrounds us. Hands feel the fine, gritty grain of dirt in the bed of an old pickup, that slippery smoothness of mud from a shallow riverbed, the gentle heat reflecting off the water as you hold your fingers out to absorb the warmth. Hands were made to be interlinked. We transfer all that we feel, have felt, and will feel into a lover, father, mother, or sibling, and in turn they bestow what they have felt upon and into us. Hands are our nose, eyes, ears, and mouth. Hands are what assemble our scattered memories, worn…
Extremely tender and caring in a way I did not expect. It’s structure is one of the most interesting things about it—pushing away regular ideas of narrative for something more segmented yet still intimate. I think I’m gonna return to this later because I’m not sure if it all really sank in and made sense but I’d easily call this a highlight. Wow
ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT is a non linear, hushed, meditative tone poem. Lots of tender, beautifully captured shots of embraces, touching hands and shifts within nature. There’s some gorgeous imagery here and I’m sure many will appreciate its artistry but it wasn’t for me.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is unlike anything else I’ve seen at Sundance. A non-linear, lyrical look at love, loss, and life itself, conveyed through Raven Jackson’s delicately dreamy direction and Jomo Fray’s consuming cinematography. Hushed, but full of heart in every frame.
2023 Ranked
A black woman's melancholia roams without bounds in rural Mississippi. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, the stunning full-length debut from Raven Jackson, completely swept me off my feet when I thought I'd seen all of the goodies the 2023 cinema has to offer.
Produced by Barry Jenkins, this is clearly influenced by the style of Moonlight, and maybe a bit of Apichatpong Weerasethakul here and there, owing to the wet, sentimental touch of the cinematography. Inspired by photos of Jackson's relatives, it's undoubtedly a highly personal, intimate experience that activates all senses. Jackson successfully transported the audience into that mysterious world of joy and pain, where life and death always seem to go hand in hand.
I admire its symbolic meaning of water and dirt as metaphors for the circle of life, which provides a touch of zen to an already non-linear story. I also love how everybody is dark-skinned in this. Highly recommended.
Artsy; contemplative; nonlinear; plodding; pretty; tedious; underwritten; well-shot.
Feels like nothing else at Sundance. Conveys its themes through repeated sounds (water, cicadas) and images (so many hands). We are all connected. The way of water.
symphonic cinema. the bodies relationship to the earth through fingers wading in water, air, dirt. through a mothers hand on her pregnant belly. through the feeling of grass against the skin. time is let loose as with any memory, with grief and love and loss being experienced seemingly all at once. raven jacksons aims as a filmmaker are ones that i strongly, spiritually identify with, especially the devotion to the elements and openness to letting a moment simply exist and breathe in its own space. the 2020's have been an incredible decade so far for debut films.
tender impressionism on memory lane, lingering and meandering while crisp 35mm imagery meets a high-profile soundscape.
minimalism vs maximalism - a poetic flight through the sky while all technical departments of film school have a field day. young (a tiny bit overly) enthusiastic energy meets an intimate, gentle portrait.
