The Story ...
DERVAL ROSE (11) is a hard little girl who will melt your heart. After her heroin addict mom dies in Dublin, she's sent to NYC to live with her father whom she's never met. She constantly wears a tweed hat that droops over her eyes. It's her only physical memory of her mother who told her it's the hat John Lennon wore in the iconic Statue of Liberty photo. Derval inherited her mom's devotion to John, so much so that he's become a paternal figure for her... she even prays to him.
Derval hates her father, TERRY. On Christmas Eve he drags her to a New York Rangers hockey game. The star player, PAPPY, scores a hat trick and fans throw hats on the ice to celebrate. A drunken fan grabs Derval's hat and throws it on the ice. She darts off after it. Terry gets knocked out while attacking the drunk. Pappy picks up her hat and wears it while skating. Derval ends up outside Madison Garden alone. She spots a Guinness sign at a pub, and runs in. Sitting there is SEAMUS, a blundering hustler. He denies her pleas for help until two enforcers show up to collect on a debt. It's then we see the first of many "hustles" by Derval as she shepherds Seamus to safety. She invents a story, duping him into helping her.
It's the journey of a little girl searching for her mother's memory, a father desperate for a second chance to win his daughter's love, and a lost soul who needs to believe in something again, that brings them all the promise of redemption. DERVAL ROSE proves that no matter how fractured a family may be, it can still be healed and grow to include the most unlikely of characters. It teaches us that every heart needs a family to beat whole.
