Water gushing out into the streets and pouring down the sky, and a glistening black umbrella, feeble and powerless against the wind… Much like in Wannes Vanspauwen and Pol de Plecker’s earlier works—icy and desolate landscapes in Noisetrain, or the ethereal fog in The Day That Was White— It’s Raining, It’s Pouring also bristles with elemental imagery: a man (Sakis Brönnimann, credited as Rain) is repeatedly besieged by raging gusts and sheets of torrential rain. And what does our Sisyphus seek? Merely to reach a weather-beaten door at the end of the street. There is co(s)mic horror at play here, in the mythic struggle between an indomitable human will and a drolly recalcitrant world.

This epic undertone further finds expression in Daniel Hart’s soundtrack, which, replete with choral flourishes and thunderous climaxes, perfectly accompanies the rain-soaked visuals. Indeed, what is at stake here is nothing less than the world itself. Sometimes, all that matters is to just make one’s way through the door—on the other side of which is eternity, transcendence, nothingness, or perhaps even a well-deserved beer?