An exhausted, workaholic actress, Anna Baskin, 44, abruptly extricates herself from a successful but mind-numbing TV role, returning to her past life in New York to reinvent herself.

A vibrant account of immigrant Jewish life (and loss) as told by denizens of Manhattan’s Lower East Side (including The Living Theatre cofounder Judith Malina).

This is the first part of Stranger Than Paradise (1984) which was shown separately before it became part of the longer film and was retitled "The New World".