In contemporary China, cities are growing fast with large-scale investments in urban housing to accommodate rural-urban migration. For people from rural areas, buying a house in the city has become an important symbol of success. Yet, the houses they can afford are often located in city outskirts with few labor opportunities. Therefore many are unable to stay long-term in their newly acquired house, and instead furnish and store it for the future. This film is about such a house. It is empty most of the year, but the owners consider it home.

Empty Home was made by Sanderien Verstappen and Willy Sier in the city of Wuhan in 2016, based on Sier's PhD research at the University of Amsterdam. It is accompanied by an article in the journal Visual Studies (2023). The film premiered in December 2016 at the VU Ethnographic Film Festival in Amsterdam, and was published in The Guardian as part of their 'Other China Week', an online series of articles about rapid urbanization in China.