Willie is a New York bum, who picks at his foil-covered microwave dinners and cheats at cards. Soon his 16-year-old cousin Eva arrives from Budapest – they never reveal their true intentions about desiring a better life to one another. The two Hungarian immigrants’ lack of belonging in this country gradually brings them closer. Joined by their friend Eddie, the three travel to Florida to visit relatives. Unbeknown to them, Florida is the place where the first Disneyland has opened, which the viewer will ultimately never get to see.

A canonical film that outlined the trajectory of Jarmusch’s sense of humour, his themes, his international career in Cannes and Sundance, and his signature style as an outsider that shapes the moving image into something akin to poetry. The film’s 67 shots that fade into darkness lure us into a melancholy continent, an unusual mirror state of America. For Jarmusch, America is idle, wasted, and bored, like most of his protagonists and his favourite poet, Thomas Sterne Eliot. Even the musician John Lurie, who plays Willie, is apathetic, or has perhaps overslept to the extreme in an act of impish bravura: does dreaming of America mean being in a metaphysical waking state?