Salt, by Selina Thompson

Performance artist Selina Thompson recreates her award-winning dramatic monologue about a journey she made by cargo ship to retrace the triangular route of the transatlantic slave trade. Poetic and deeply personal, Salt is part testimony, part performance and part excavation of collective memory through archive and music.

Throughout the film, Thompson explores her painfully difficult but ultimately redemptive exploration of the Atlantic triangle, and in doing so, takes us on a cathartic pilgrimage through grief, race and identity. Darkly comic in places but also intensely sad, Salt is Thompson’s deeply human response to being both British and a descendant of a people enslaved by the British.

Winner: Best Arts Documentary, Grierson Awards 2022

“Salt takes viewers on a deeply personal journey, experienced and lived by millions. It’s a story about grief and colonialism, told by Selina Thompson with a strong voice and in an original way. It was moving and, in places, darkly comic. We were captivated by it.” Grierson Judging Panel