Ascel is a 19-year-old girl living in a small town in Kyrgyzstan. Her alcoholic father has arranged for her to be married for money. She finds, however, that she is pregnant by her secret boyfriend, and decides to elope with him after the wedding night to Moscow. Despite her rosy dreams about life in the big city, Ascel is busy just looking for work and running away from the immigration police. One day, she goes to get an abortion at a clinic, where she meets a French woman offering to buy her baby…
"The Empty Home" is the official submission of Kyrgyzstan to the Best Foreign Language Film of the 2013 Academy Awards. The director is Nurbek Egen of "The Wedding Chest" which was screened at the 2007 Tokyo International Film Festival.