De Valera i Meiriceá

The extraordinary story of how Éamon de Valera stowed away on a ship to America in 1919 and announced himself in the lobby of the world’s most expensive hotel as “The First President of Ireland”. In truth, de Valera was a wanted man and Ireland was still part of the British Empire. Immediately Irish America makes him a star. Then it all goes incredibly wrong. Using previously unseen archive material preserved in New York, we tell on screen for the first time the untold story of the political baptism of fire for de Valera that follows and how the trip shapes him into the politician he would become – a man who would go on to shape modern Ireland for the next fifty years.