All the Empty Rooms

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All the Empty Rooms

PG-13

2025

34m

Documentary

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Popcornmeter

91%

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11 Reviews

87%

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50+ Ratings

Steve Hartman and Lou Bopp embark on a seven-year-long project to document the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings.

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Ty Burr

Ty Burr's Watch List (Substack)

5d

4/4

The film's great power comes from naming the dead and briefly bringing each unique child back to life, with tiny details that can wreck you with their specificity. It's a movie to fill a viewer with freshened loss and renewed resolve.

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William Bibbiani

TheWrap

Feb 20

It’s not self-congratulatory — that would be repugnant, so don’t worry, the focus is still the children and their families — but Hartman is on a journey, and that journey changed him and his photographer.

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Abhishek Srivastava

The Times of India

2d

4/5

This is a gentle and soothing documentary that offers quiet comfort to those who have lost loved ones in mindless school shootings across the United States.

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Jennie Kermode

Eye for Film

5d

4/5

For the most part...the rooms speak for themselves.

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Pete Hammond

Deadline Hollywood Daily

Feb 24

This 33-minute documentary is not just a portrait of the children lost but also of the reporter determined to use his camera and voice to make sure they are never forgotten.

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Christopher Lloyd

The Film Yap

Feb 17

3/5

On the surface it’s a powerful subject: journalists who talk to the parents of children killed in school shootings and record photographs of their bedrooms. I’m an old-school believer in "don’t report on the reporting," and there’s too much of that here.

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Stephen G

@RT76499974 1d

Intensely heartfelt, this is a painful but powerful masterpiece that in the end is a testament to life and love. In an inteview for the online outlet The Athletic, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, whose father died from gun violence and who was an executive producer for the film, sums it up better than I can: "Once I saw it, I was just blown away by the beauty, the sadness, the humanity, so poignantly done. And it’s important, given my advocacy for gun violence prevention, (that) you look for ways to touch everybody and avoid the political discourse that brings the issue down. "The film perfectly threaded that needle. I’m trying to recommend everyone to watch it. It’s 35 minutes, but you should watch it. It’s hard to watch, but it’s unforgettable."

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Jordan P

@jordangpittman Mar 8

This review may contain spoilers. Gut-wrenching. A major choice to show the writing with the "more guns/less guns" on it -- like it's trying to be apolitical. I was hopeful when the narrator said he put some of the blame on the media, but then this. A little bit of a push would've made me rank this higher.

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David F

@dfulmer Mar 7

A great, short film about all the crazy shootings, from the point of view of the empty rooms left behind.

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Johann D. M

@Johann33 Feb 17

DEVASTATING AND DEEPLY AFFECTING! A documentary short that follows veteran CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp as they spend several years visiting the bedrooms preserved by families of children killed in U.S. school shootings. These rooms, frozen exactly as they were left, become emotional memorials that speak louder than any statistic.

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George Z

@Gzaver Feb 17

You don’t rate a film like this. It honors these children. It is heartbreaking to watch, I had tears in my eyes . the entire 35min. It’s an important film.

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Jonathan K

@aFIREintheattic Feb 14

Ugh that was a tough one.

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Joshua Seftel

Director

Frank Blackwell

Self

Nancy Blackwell

Self

Lou Bopp

Self

Rose Bopp

Self

Gloria Cazares

Self

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Synopsis

Steve Hartman and Lou Bopp embark on a seven-year-long project to document the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings.

Director: Joshua Seftel
Producer: Trevor Burgess, James Costa, Conall Jones, Joshua Seftel
Distributor: Netflix
Production Co: Artemis Rising Foundation, Smartypants Pictures, Hyperobject Industries
Rating: PG-13 (Brief Strong Language|Thematic Material)
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Dec 1, 2025
Runtime: 34m

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