A pastoral scene opens Raven Jackson’s debut feature, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt: We find Mack (played as a child by Kaylee Nicole Johnson), a pensive little girl in pigtails, crouching by the riverside as her father, Isaiah (Chris Chalk), gives her a fishing lesson. An otherwise quotidian episode comes alive in the details. To her father’s chagrin, Mack slides a curious finger over the slick, wet scales of a gasping fish, freshly plucked from the water. A layered soundscape maps the bucolic environs—the Mississippi countryside, it turns out—and sparse dialogue gives way to an indigenous orchestra: a cacophony of cicadas, the chimes of slow-moving water, chirping crickets.
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