SYNOPSIS (LONG)

Been Here Stay Here is a quiet, immersive portrait of a place long used as a symbol, but rarely heard on its own terms. Set on Tangier Island—a centuries-old Christian fishing community in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay—the film eschews the tropes of conventional climate storytelling. There are no experts, voiceovers, or statistics. Been Here Stay Here invites audiences to sit with the lived reality of a community facing the slow erosion of its land, not through spectacle or alarm, but through faith, memory, and daily life.

For decades, Tangier has been framed as “America’s first climate casualty”—a vanishing island whose residents, often portrayed as skeptical or backwards, are blamed for their own precarious situation. In political shorthand, the island becomes a symbol of denial, often used to reinforce preexisting divides rather than bridge them. But this film offers another way in. Through patient observation and deep relational trust, Been Here Stay Here uncovers a story not about denial but about devotion: to place, to faith, to a way of life that refuses easy categorization.

The island has lost over two-thirds of its landmass since the 1850s. Water laps at doorsteps. Graves fall into the sea. But the residents remain—fishermen, pastors, parents, children—bound by deep roots and a spiritual language that often runs counter to mainstream environmental discourse. For many, climate change isn’t a hoax, nor is it a priority. It’s simply not the frame they use. Concerns are more immediate: the stability of the crab industry, the safety of their kids, the survival of their church. And yet, stewardship is everywhere—embedded in the rhythms of fishing, in reverence for the land, in the quiet moral calculus of staying when it would be easier to leave.

Rather than argue with or explain away these differences, Been Here Stay Here lingers inside them. The film is not a lecture—it’s a listening space. It asks: What gets overlooked when we judge people solely by their perceived contradictions? How might we begin to understand a community not in spite of their beliefs, but through them? What does it mean to love a place that is slipping away?

Inspired by the work of climate scientist and Evangelical Christian Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, the film attempts to model a different kind of climate conversation—one rooted in relationship, not rhetoric. Hayhoe often says that the most important thing you can do about climate change is to talk about it—not to win, but to connect. This film takes that seriously.

In the end, Been Here Stay Here is less about rising seas than it is about what rises in us when we stop trying to convince and start trying to understand. It is a film about belonging, loss, and the radical act of staying put—even when the world tells you to move on.

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