1. Author’s Position
The Disappearances began as something deeply personal. I am Afghan, and like many living in exile, I watch a form of violence that keeps me permanently separated from my homeland. I have witnessed, often in silence, Taliban networks murder thinkers, soldiers, artists, and friends in a campaign of fear designed not only to kill individuals but to erase a society.
What struck me most was not only the brutality, but the silence surrounding it. There are no trials, no records, no acknowledged deaths. People are removed quietly, without dignity or ceremony. These disappearances are used as warnings to anyone who dares to imagine a different future, while feeding the resentment and obedience that sustain authoritarian power.
Politically, the project responds to disappearance as a tool of rule. These killings are not accidents or isolated acts of cruelty. They are organised, extrajudicial punishments that signal that anyone can be next. By erasing artists, thinkers, and soldiers without trace, the system punishes some of the most visible and hopeful figures in society, forcing communities into submission. Violence becomes ever present, procedural, and unaccountable, corroding civic life and producing withdrawal, migration, and long term instability. This is not chaos. It is a system.
The Disappearances sits between the personal and the political. It is not journalism or documentation, but an artistic response grounded in individual lives. Through short, intimate stories inspired by those who have vanished, the project resists erasure by restoring presence. It asks what remains when witnesses are removed, and answers with attention, memory, and care.
2. Core Definition
The Disappearances is a chapter based animated film about people removed through targeted, extrajudicial violence carried out by clandestine groups operating under Taliban command. This violence is deliberate, organised, and largely unrecorded. Terror is generated not only through murder itself, but through silence and partial knowledge. Some people know what is happening, others sense it, and many turn away because the brutality makes witnessing unbearable.
The film focuses on the victims and the consequences of their absence: loss, grief, pain, and the slow transformation of everyday life under fear. Disappearance is not shown directly, but felt through who is missing, who is waiting, and what can no longer be spoken.
The film approaches disappearance as a lived human experience, grounded in ordinary acts of hoping, fearing, remembering, and waiting. By staying close to personal stories, it reaches toward something universal: how terror corrodes trust, reshapes social life, and alters the fragile ways people hold on to one another.
3. Form and Structure
The film is 35 minutes long and structured like a book, composed of chapters. Each chapter centres on the life of one individual who has disappeared, and the people, spaces, and routines shaped by that loss. While connected by tone and theme, each chapter functions as a complete and self contained story.
The film is not a tale of pain, but a glimpse into a life lived with joy, love, humour, and purpose. It is also a story of the strength of those who remain, carried through absence, memory, and grief. Domestic spaces, landscapes, gestures, and the rhythms of daily life carry the narrative. They are shaped and inhabited by the emotions of those who once dwelled within them, before they were cruelly taken.
This structure allows the project to exist in multiple forms. As a whole, The Disappearances functions as a short animated feature. At the same time, each chapter can stand alone and be shared independently without losing its integrity. This modular approach reflects the nature of disappearance itself: individual lives taken one by one, yet forming a larger pattern when seen together.
As the Persian verse reminds us:
بنی آدم اعضای یکدیگرند
چو در آفرینش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوی به درد آورد روزگار
دگر اعضا را نماند قرار
Each short story will also be reformatted for social media and digital platforms. Together, these fragments form an online tribute to the disappeared, a virtual cemetery that resists forgetting by insisting on presence.
Stories From Nowhere 