The one-season Egyptian television series Disappearance (original name Ekhtefa) by writer/directer Ayman Medhat is currently streaming on Netflix. According to the Netflix summary, “A university lecturer in Russia returns to Egypt after her husband’s sudden disappearance, uncovering further mysteries the more she investigates.”

Set almost entirely in Cairo, Disappearance offers a lot of suspense, although almost no action, and is soap opera-ish in part. Still, it is a very entertaining series, with outstanding acting, seamless editing, and a very inventive storyline. The theme music is also memorable.

In Arabic with English subtitles, Disappearance comprises 30 episodes, and obviously it’s a daunting task to get through it, if you indeed hang in there. Each installment is only about 30 minutes long, however, so you can bang out one or two at at time.

Whether binge-worthy or not, Disappearance (Ekhtefa) leads to a generally satisfying conclusion. Each episode starts with a summary (that you can skip) to bring you back up to speed if necessary.

In this Disappearance review, some spoilers follow.

The Deep State in ‘Disappearance’

During the Trump administration, we’ve learned that the Deep State can subvert the intelligence services to carry out a corrupt personal vendetta including surveillance. A similar thread runs through Disappearance that leads to tragedy.

Cairo Backdrop

Disappearance primarily takes place in very upscale, secular Cairo and operates back and forth in two time lines. One is in 2018 that follows the professor who has returned from Russia. The other portrays scenes from a novel (that may or may not actually be fiction) about an unsolved mystery, circa 1968

The latter scenes bear a yellowish tint to remind the viewers that they are seeing flashbacks.

Most of the plot points are wrapped up by the final episode, although there are a few minor elements that seem to be abandoned along the way.

Parenthetically, Amazon Prime is currently streaming White Dragon, which also involves a college professor who journeys to another country to find out what happened to a spouse. In both, bigamy is part of a subplot.

nce Ekhtefa on Netflix

Exceptional Performances

Award-winning actress Nelly Karim expertly plays Farida and Nasima, the main female characters in each time line with sharply different personalities. Karim, whose whose bio indicates that she has Egyptian and Russian heritage, appears in almost every scene.

Burly actor Mohamed Mamdouh, in his role as Suleiman, the same character at obviously different ages in both time lines, is also outstanding.

He has the amazing ability to project awkwardness, sincerity, subservience, menace, and intimidation, sometimes even in the same scene. He delivers an incredible performance as someone who may or may not be Disappearance‘s villain.

Among additional cast members, Hesham Selim portrays Farida’s author husband Sharif, while Basma plays the other woman in Sharif’s life who has her own agenda.

Does It All Ad Up?

A couple things that you might notice immediately about Disappearance. First, as with virtually all of these yarns, there are aspects of profound implausibility. Moreover, characters in both Disappearance eras have a unusually difficult time connecting obvious dots.

The characters smoke so many cigarettes on screen that it’s a wonder that they didn’t come down with COPD. Also, despite Cairo’s massive population, the characters in the opus enjoy a miraculous ability to find prime parking spots as needed.

Also, in the late 1960s, lawyers and other professionals apparently made a lot of house calls or cafe calls rather than meet clients in their offices. And in 2018, a Cairo police inspector evidently never goes off duty.

See also:

The Disappearing Manuscript

Perhaps the most puzzling premise of this drama surrounds the missing novel manuscript. Let’s stipulate that it is conceivable that some old-school authors still hand write the original drafts of their books on paper.

The idea that after a print run of the finished product, a publishing house would fail to park a complete digital copy on a remote server or even on a thumb drive (the latter omission which is finally mentioned deep into the show) is extremely hard to believe.

A footnote: While emotional parallels exist in both time lines, it’s worth noting that one plot twist or big reveal that viewers might anticipate surprisingly never occurs in Disappearance.

Sanitized Subtitles?

As alluded to above, Disappearance depicts how in 1968 Cairo, a government spy (and next-door neighbor) Suleiman becomes obsessed with Nasima. In so doing, he embarks on an effort to ruin her husband Nader, an artist and Borat lookalike. In fact, Suleiman’s boss, who also has the hots for Nasima, initiates the “trumped up” (as it were) investigation of the married couple.

In one scene, an art gallery director reveals that back in the day, Suleiman intimidated him and other owners to stop buying Nader’s paintings. Suleiman warned the galleries that Nader was a communist intent on spreading communist propaganda.

However, in the late 60s, the Egypt and the U.S.S.R. were allies, so that bit of dialogue would appear to make no sense. Could the the subtitles have been changed (and English-only speakers can only speculate as to what might have been actually said) for the Netflix audience?

Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

Disappearance (Ekhtefa) gets a positive recommendation especially for fans of non-linear narratives, but its length might be an issue for Netflix subscribers.

[Featured image credit: Dan Lundberg, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 license]