Powerhouse producers J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg are teaming for a big screen adaptation of Melissa Fleming’s non-fiction book A Hope More Powerful Than the See: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival.
The book details the harrowing survival story of Doaa Al Zamel, a Syrian woman fleeing Egypt for Sweden, who found herself shipwrecked with two small children and survived for days floating on an inflatable water ring with them in her arms. Here’s the official description of the book:
Adrift in a frigid sea, no land in sight―just debris from the ship’s wreckage and floating corpses all around―nineteen-year-old Doaa Al Zamel floats with a small inflatable water ring around her waist and clutches two children, barely toddlers, to her body. The children had been thrust into Doaa’s arms by their drowning relatives, all refugees who boarded a dangerously overcrowded ship bound for Sweden and a new life. For days, Doaa floats, prays, and sings to the babies in her arms. She must stay alive for these children. She must not lose hope.
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea is being produced by Paramount Pictures and Amblin Partners. As yet, the project is yet to secure a writer or director.
Originally published March 9, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
