Nothing But The Rain

Logline

After accidentally destroying a crucial hard drive, an anxious intern director takes shelter from the rain with a retired actress and her devoted fan who cannot speak English, and the brief encounter begins to blur the distance between strangers.

Credits

Neve - Loey Jones-Perpich
Aria - Laura Lee Bahr
Vu - Wonda Liu

Director/Writer: Yiwei Xie
Producer: Minyu Chen
Producing Assistant: Yinyin Lu
Assistant Director: Zhang Yue
Casting Director/2nd AD: Sam Permar

Director of Photography: Sarasa Kikuchi
Camera Operator: Robin Chen / Ethan Smith
Assistant Camera: Jiamin Li / Robin Chen / Ethan Smith / Xiayu Zhou
Gaffer: Marvin Xu
Electrician: Ruiming Du
Sound Recordist: Carolyn Liu
Key Grip: Karen McKeen
Grip: Yinyin Lu

Production Designer: Wayne Li
Art Director: Emma Angen Rose
Prop Designer: Mia Swensen
Production Assistant: Annie Acker / Yusi Huang / Chih Yu Liu (Caelyn)
Script Supervisor: Sam Permar / Jiamin Li
Editor: Wayne Li / Yiwei Xie
Composer: Maggie Delaney
Sound Designer/Foley Artist: Tianning Liu
Dialogue Editor: Tianning Liu
Sound Mixer: Sage Leger

Director Statement

Nothing but the Rain comes from a feeling I have carried since the pandemic: the strange tenderness that can arise when people are forced to remain together. Even as strangers, they laugh together, endure together, and for a brief time the noise outside seems to lose its hold. What moved me was the paradox within that intimacy: a shelter formed almost against one’s will can become so vivid and precious that one almost wishes the disorder beyond it would continue, only so that life inside this temporary enclosure might last a little longer.

An old Chinese parable tells of a man who drops his sword into the water while traveling by boat, then carves a mark into the side of the boat, hoping to return to that place and find it again. The story is usually read as a lesson about foolishness, but I am moved by another possibility: perhaps he knows the sword may already be lost. Perhaps the mark is not certainty, but longing. When we are trapped within a place, a boat, a house, a planet, we still make marks. We still look outward from where we are. Sometimes we must push the stone back to the top of the mountain. Sometimes we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

This film is shaped by that faith. If we must be held somewhere, even briefly, perhaps the question is not only how to escape, but how to live there with tenderness. Rain has always felt close to that idea for me: the sky and the earth do not truly meet, yet rain allows them a brief contact. In Chinese culture, such an encounter might be called 缘: the unseen bond through which people meet, part, and sometimes meet again. Nothing but the Rain is drawn to passing encounters, temporary shelters, and the fragile hope that survives without guarantees. Even if what we recover is not the sword, not certainty, not the life we imagined, but nothing but the rain.