Publication Date: 02-04-2026

All the Empty Rooms (2025) review

Dir. Joshua Seftel

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

I remember being in my high school consumer education class when news of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting started breaking. Class stopped. Those who had smartphones were glued to them, and those of us who didn’t were leering over the shoulders of those who did. Our teacher was aghast, at her desk devastated. “Can you believe this shit?,” one of my classmates said to me when he showed me a CNN article on his phone. “This is going to prompt big change,” I remember replying.

Nothing happened, at least from a national legislation perspective. Whenever another school shooting occurs, I never repeat that same statement, nor has it ever even crossed my mind. If 20 dead schoolchildren didn’t prompt any kind of meaningful changes to gun laws and ownership restrictions in this country, our cowardly politicians won’t act until it’s their kid dead in a classroom — and even then, the NRA would probably cut them a handsome check in addition to offering their thoughts and prayers. It’s embittering that in the self-proclaimed greatest country in the world, the leading cause of death for children under 18 is gun violence. School shootings are an inevitability; at least to the point where schools routinely hold lockdown/active shooter drills, and the debate over whether or not to arm teachers rages on. I hate to wax so cynical, but it’s at the point where anytime you’re out in public, there’s obviously the possibility that some armed loon will open fire. All one can do is live their life and hope neither they nor anyone they love and care about is in the line of fire when the inevitable happens yet again.

That all brings me to All the Empty Rooms, a short documentary making headlines after being nominated at the 98th Academy Awards. The glacially paced yet paradoxically fast-moving 34 minute doc revolves around broadcast journalist Steve Hartman, who, in the wake of Columbine, CBS News’ executives tasked him with finding a “silver lining” when reporting on the tragedy. Who displayed courage? Who acted against their self-interests? As you can imagine, Hartman had to do this year-after-year, time-after-time, to the point where he felt his message was falling on deaf ears.

With the help of Lou Bopp, a photographer, Hartman decided that he would document the bedrooms left behind by the children killed in school shootings. When the blood in the school hallways is cleaned, and the TV cameras turn their attention to something else, what happens to the parents? How do they go on living? The Sandy Hook shooting took place on December 14th, 2012, and I remember tears welling in my eyes thinking about all the parents who had wrapped presents underneath the tree for children who won’t be coming home ever again.

As Joshua Seftel’s short shows us, the parents of children killed in school shootings often leave their things untouched, as if one day their child will return and see everything in their room in place. Seftel’s camera looks at four families, and shows the bedrooms of their late kids. One’s room is lined with any/everything SpongeBob. Another still has a tube of toothpaste open. Another has photos with their schoolfriends lining a corkboard, where more memories were sure to exist.

This is the kind of doc you don’t necessarily want to watch, but you should. It’s sometimes painful, yet it’s humanizing, and shows the everlasting, ceaseless hurt with which these parents must grapple for the rest of their lives. In some ways, it’s a documentary of a country’s failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens. For it to end without any kind of takeaway in the realm of advocating for stricter gun laws or something similar feels like a missed opportunity; however, it’s also probably the journalist in Hartman that stops him from vocalizing his own grievances. After all, when you’re taking photos of twin beds that will no longer be slept in, toys that will no longer be played with, and families, including young siblings, forever scarred by violence, what more is there to say?

Directed by: Joshua Seftel.