MFDB

Storyline

Political activist Jimmy Gralton is deported from Ireland during the country's 'Red Scare' of the 1930s.

The film is inspired by Donal O’Kelly’s play ‘Jimmy Gralton’s Dancehall’ and based on the life of Jimmy Gralton. Deported in 1933 by de Valera’s Government for his alleged communist sympathies, Jimmy Gralton was politically active during the War of Independence and, in the 1920s, erected a meeting hall on his parents' land - the ‘Pearse-Connolly Hall in honour of the Socialist and Republican leaders of 1916’. This hall became a focal point for Gralton’s political activities, which provoked the opposition of local clergy, who became determined to have him arrested. In the years that followed, Gralton became a member of the Revolutionary Workers Group, spoke at anti-eviction meetings and meetings of the National Unemployed Movement. He was a high-profile casualty of the ‘Red Scare’ that swept through Ireland during the January 1933 general election, which resulted in the new Fianna Fáil Government issuing Gralton’s deportation order as ‘an undesirable alien’. Gralton lived out the rest of his days in the US, joining the American Labour Movement and running as a candidate for the Communist Party in the Borough elections in Manhattan before his death in New York in 1945.

Festivals & Academy awards and others

Festival de Cannes 2014
Competition

Releases

Spain (21 of November 2014)
United kingdom (30 of May 2014)