A Hope More Powerful than the Sea is a book by Melissa Fleming about Syrian refugee Doaa Al Zamel's experiences leading up to and during the 2014 Malta migrant shipwreck.

[3] Al Zamel has a happy childhood, living in the extended family home, until the Syrian civil war breaks out.

[1] In Egypt, Bassam and Al Zamel pay people smugglers to move them to Europe, boarding a boat with 500 other refugees.

[1] Steven Spielberg bought the rights to the book, but production stopped after the producers received media backlash in 2018 for commissioning white American writer and actor Lena Dunham for penning the script, who has previously been accused of being a hipster racist.

[6] Flemming, along with other Syrian rights activists, accused Spielberg and co-producer JJ Abrams of whitewashing for hiring Dunham to write the screenplay.