Submissions for this Year's Festival Due TODAY!

Plus: A film at the intersection of climate & faith makes its NYC premiere this weekend.

Marisa Guerrero, Alec Turnbull, and J. English Cook

May 15, 2026

Today’s the day! It’s our final deadline to submit your film for consideration for this year’s festival. We’ve already received over 450 submissions, and our team has been busy behind the scenes screening each one. We’d love to see yours too! Submit your film today.

In this Newsletter:

⏰ Final Open Call Reminder: Film Submissions Due Today
🎥 NYC Premiere: Been Here Stay Here
🌱 Opportunities & Events

⏰ Submit Your Film TODAY!

Last call for film submissions to CFF ’26! Today is our final deadline for entries into this year’s festival. We welcome features, shorts, and TV & Internet episodes across formats, including narrative, documentary, experimental, animation, music videos, children’s programs, and more. If it’s climate related, we want to see it!

Applications close at 11:59 PM tonight.

Submit your Film on FilmFreeway

🎥 This Weekend: NYC Premiere of Been Here Stay Here

Do you have plans this weekend? Catch the New York premiere of Been Here Stay Here (2024, dir. David Usui), playing all weekend at Quad Cinema! Been Here Stay Here follows a fishing community on a remote island in the Chesapeake Bay as they struggle to hold on to their home, raising questions about belonging, belief, and what it means to stay when the ground beneath you disappears.

Attend the Saturday evening showtime for an exclusive post-screening Q&A that CFF Co-Founders Alec Turnbull and J. English Cook are moderating, with director David Usui, Tangier Island mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge, and Mary Evelyn Tucker & John Grim, Yale Forum on Religion & Ecology.

📆 When: Saturday, May 16 at 7pm

📍 Where: Quad Cinema, 34 W 13th Street, New York, NY 10011

🍿 What’s Playing: Been Here Stay Here film screening + filmmaker Q&A

Get Tickets for Been Here Stay Here

More about the film: Set on a remote island in the Chesapeake Bay, Been Here Stay Here brings audiences inside one of the most isolated communities in America: a conservative Christian fishing town fighting to hold on as the land beneath them disappears.

The film offers rare, unfiltered access to a place where climate and faith intersect, in a way that feels both unexpected and essential. It’s a canary-in-the-coal-mine story—an early glimpse of what thousands of coastal communities may soon face—yet it avoids political rhetoric, offering something more grounded and human. Been Here Stay Here becomes both a portrait of a disappearing island and a clear-eyed look at how belief, identity, and home are tested when the future arrives faster than expected. Watch the trailer.

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