“Been Here Stay Here” is a poetic, immersive eco-doc that reminds me of the best work of Frederick Wiseman. It opens at NYC’s Quad Cinema on Friday, May 15. Go here for showtimes and appearances by the director, participants and other guests.

Tangier is a small island in the Chesapeake Bay between Virginia and Maryland. Most of its 436 residents make their living by harvesting crabs and oysters. They speak an interesting dialect that sounds like a mix of Southern American English and British English. The island is mostly marshland and only four feet above sea level. In the past 150 years the island has lost 67% of its landmass and a recent study claims that it may become uninhabitable in 25-50 years because of climate change.

This is a cause of considerable anxiety for the Tangier folk: they have tight-knit families who don’t want to move elsewhere. Tangier Island mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge (who often wears a Trump cap) acknowledges that climate change is real but he and many on the island don’t believe it is a man-made crisis. Like most of the people in Tangier Eskridge is a Methodist; this resulted because of the work of a charismatic parson in the 19th century. (The islanders were opposed to slavery and didn’t secede with the rest of Virginia during the Civil War.) It’s also a dry island–alcohol cannot be sold there.

Despite their conservative religious background, the residents are good-natured and friendly to strangers, offering tours of the island in the utility vehicles most drive rather than automobiles. (They sometimes drive and sit in them during outdoor religious services.) They aren’t the hateful, dismissive MAGA types you often see on the news. When a young parson who is part of a Christian-based environmental action organization visits them they listen patiently to him and even invite him to speak at their church. They are just a little resentful that the government isn’t doing more to protect the island from further erosion. “They seem to be more interested in protecting the birds then us,” complains one Tangier man. (After CNN did a report on the island, Trump called the mayor and pledged help but it hasn’t been delivered yet.)

The film is remarkable in its gentle immersion into the day-to-day lives of the people in Tangier. We see the seafood workers (they call themselves “watermen”) pulling up their cages of crabs, throwing back the female or immature ones, sorting through oysters, sometimes accompanied by their sons who are learning the trade early on. The children roam freely around the island (there is very little traffic to endanger them), playing, celebrating Halloween and running with sparklers on the beach at night for the 4th of July. (Shades of the 2012 film “Beasts of the Southern Wild!”) The elders talk about the many generations of watermen who lived there. The teenagers worry that the island will be entirely underwater within their lifetimes.

This is one of my favorite docs of the year. Director David Usui doesn’t judge his subjects or try to convince them that climate change is man-made; he has no agenda other than empathy. The stunning photography and brilliant editing work to absorb the viewer into a rapturous flow of gentle people interacting with a lush natural landscape that is sadly disappearing a little each day.