In the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan, tradition is king. Polo’s still played with a freshly killed goat and the men still marry their women the old-fashioned way: By abducting them off the street and forcing them to be their wife. Bride kidnapping is a supposedly ancient custom that’s made a major comeback since the fall of Communism and now accounts for nearly half of all marriages in some parts of the country. We traveled to the Kyrgyz countryside to follow/aid and abet a young groom named Kubanti as he surprised his teenage girlfriend Nazgul with the gift of marriage/kidnapping. 

In part 2, a neighboring woman mourns her daughter’s suicide as the result of her kidnapper husband, and Kubanti and his groomsmen make the snatch and drag the bride-to-be kicking and screaming to the wedding yurt. Literally.