Editing Stranger Than Paradise (section)

==Release and reception==
The film was shown at the [[Cannes Film Festival]], where it won the [[Caméra d'Or]] award for debut films (1984). It also won the [[Golden Leopard]] and the [[Prize of the Ecumenical Jury]] – Special Mention at the 1984 [[Locarno International Film Festival]], the [[Grand Prix (Belgian Film Critics Association)|Grand Prix]] of the [[Belgian Film Critics Association]], the Special Jury Prize at the [[Sundance Film Festival]] in 1985 and [[National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Picture]] of 1984.<ref name="nsfc" /><ref>{{Cite news|last=Attanasio|first=Paul|date=1985-01-04|title='Paradise' Lauded By Critics National Society Honors Jarmusch Film|language=en-US|newspaper=Washington Post|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1985/01/04/paradise-lauded-by-critics-national-society-honors-jarmusch-film/e6798f95-0af5-4ab1-95f8-d7ae3bd89c70/|access-date=2021-06-07|issn=0190-8286|archive-date=2023-08-31|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230831005314/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1985/01/04/paradise-lauded-by-critics-national-society-honors-jarmusch-film/e6798f95-0af5-4ab1-95f8-d7ae3bd89c70/|url-status=live}}</ref> It went on to win the [[Kinema Junpo Award]] for best foreign-language film in 1987, and the award for National Film Registry at the National Film Preservation Board, USA in 2002.<ref name=hartl/>

The film earned $2,436,000,<ref name="mojo" /> significantly more than its budget of around $100,000.<ref name="tcm" />

===Critics===
{{Rotten Tomatoes prose|96|7.7|28|A striking debut for director Jim Jarmusch, ''Stranger Than Paradise'' is an effortlessly cool exploration of finding meaning in the mundane.|ref=yes|access-date=July 2, 2023}}

Film critic [[Pauline Kael]] gave the film a generally positive review:
{{blockquote|The first section is set in the bare [[Lower East Side]] apartment of Willie, who is forced to take in Eva, his 16-year-old cousin from Budapest, for ten days. The joke here is the basic joke of the whole movie. It's in what Willie doesn't do: he doesn't offer her food or drink, or ask her any questions about life in Hungary or her trip; he doesn't offer to show her the city, or even supply her with sheets for her bed. Then Eddie comes in, even further down on the lumpen scale. Willie bets on the horses; Eddie bets on dog races. Eva, who never gets to see more of New York than the drab, anonymous looking area where Willie lives, goes off to [[Cleveland]] to stay with Aunt Lotte and work at a [[hot-dog]] stand. And when Willie and Eddie go to see her, all they see is an icy wasteland – slums and desolation – and Eddie says 'You know it's funny. You come to someplace new, and everything looks just the same.' The film has something of the same bombed-out listlessness as [[Paul Morrissey]]'s 1970 ''[[Trash (1970 film)|Trash]]'' – it's ''Trash'' without sex or [[transvestism]]. The images are so emptied out that Jarmusch makes you notice every tiny, grungy detail. And those black-outs have something of the effect of [[Samuel Beckett]]'s pauses: they make us look more intently, as Beckett makes us listen more intently.<ref name="kael" />}}

===Home media===
''Stranger Than Paradise'' has been released on [[DVD]] by [[The Criterion Collection]] as its 400th title.<ref name="criterion" /> The DVD contains a second disc which includes Jarmusch's first film, ''[[Permanent Vacation (1980 film)|Permanent Vacation]]'' (1980). Both films were restored for the DVD release using high-definition digital transfers overseen and sanctioned by the director. Supplementary footage on the second disc includes ''Kino '84: Jim Jarmusch'', a series of interviews with the cast and crew from both films by a German television program, as well as ''Some Days in January'' (1984), a behind-the-scenes [[Super-8]] film by the director's brother. An accompanying booklet features Jarmusch's 1984 essay "Some Notes on ''Stranger Than Paradise''" as well as critical commentary by Geoff Andrew and [[J. Hoberman]] on ''Stranger Than Paradise'' and by [[Lucy Sante]] on ''Permanent Vacation''.<ref name=criterion/>