Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams Hire Lena Dunham To Adapt A HOPE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE SEA
Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams have teamed up again to produce a new film based on Melissa Fleming’s book, A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival.
Variety is reporting that they’ve hired Lena Dunham to write the script for the film which documents the true story of Doaa Al Zamel, “a mother of two fleeing Egypt for Sweden by boat. Shipwrecked along the way, Al Zamel survived for days in open water holding her two small children in each arm with only the support of an inflatable water ring.”
This is an emotional, harrowing and inspiring story of survival and it’s sure to make a powerful film worth checking out. The project is set up at Paramount Pictures with Abrams’ Bad Robot and Spielberg’s Amblin Partners producing.
Dunham is best known for her work on HBO’s Girls and Camping, but she is also set to appear in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Here’s the full description of the book that offers some additional details on Spielberg and Abrams' new project:
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 stays afloat on a small inflatable ring and clutches two little girls―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 Italy and a new life. For days as Doaa drifts, she prays for rescue and sings to the babies in her arms. She must stay alive for them. She must not lose hope.
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea chronicles the life of Doaa, a Syrian girl whose life was upended in 2011 by the onset of her country's brutal civil war. Doaa and her fiance, Bassem, decide to flee to Europe to seek safety and an education, but four days after setting sail on a smuggler's dilapidated fishing vessel along with five hundred other refugees, their boat is struck and begins to sink. This is the moment when Doaa's struggle for survival really begins.
This emotionally charged, eye-opening true story that represents the millions of unheard voices of refugees who risk everything in a desperate search for the promise of a safe future. In the midst of the most pressing international humanitarian crisis of our time, Melissa Fleming paints a vivid, unforgettable portrait of the triiumph of the human spirit.
