Everything you need to know about the short documentary ‘All the Empty Rooms’
Want to see something utterly devastating that’ll shock you to the core? Here is your option. All the Empty Rooms dropped on Netflix on December 1st, and people cannot stop talking about it because it walks straight into the places nobody ever sees: the bedrooms of children lost to school shootings. And before you even realise it, the film pulls you in so close that you forget you are watching a documentary.
The whole thing started with Steve Hartman calling director Joshua Seftel after years of no contact. Years. And instead of some light catch-up, he tells him about this project where he has been visiting the bedrooms of kids who never came home. No warm-up or easing into the topic. Just the truth, handed to him as it is. Seftel said yes almost immediately, and suddenly they were on the road.
What makes the film so heavy (but in a necessary way) is the way these rooms hold everything still. A shelf no one has rearranged. A hoodie left on a chair. A book that should have been finished. The families let the crew in because they wanted people to know who their children actually were, beyond a breaking-news headline that disappears after a day or two.
By the time the doc ends, the film does something to your brain. You stop thinking in numbers. You stop treating this as a distant issue that belongs to news anchors. You begin picturing bedrooms. Stickers on walls and school IDs. Little details that felt ordinary when those kids were alive. It changes the way you read the news, and in a way, that stays.
What is All the Empty Rooms about?
The documentary follows Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp as they travel across the US, meeting families who lost their children to school shootings. Instead of revisiting the violence, the film brings you into the children’s bedrooms exactly as they were left.
These rooms feel like time froze the minute their owners walked out for the last time. Every detail, from half-packed backpacks to drawings taped on doors, becomes its own story. All the Empty Rooms film lets the rooms speak in a way nothing else can.
Who made the documentary?
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joshua Seftel directed the film, working closely with Steve Hartman, whose years of outreach built trust with families, and photographer Lou Bopp, whose still images catch tiny pieces of personality that words cannot capture. None of this is staged. None of it is dressed up. It is the real homes of real families who opened their doors for the sake of memory.
Why was this film created?
Because the usual way we talk about school shootings makes everything feel distant. Headlines flatten people. Numbers blur together. This film does the opposite. It slows everything down so viewers can understand who these kids were and what the families hold onto every single day. It is grief shown through the things that never moved and never changed.
Is there a trailer available?
Yes, Netflix released a trailer, and you will find it filled with stillness. No drama. No sensationalism. Just rooms with objects and the weight they carry.
When was it released?
All the Empty Rooms began streaming on Netflix on December 1st, and it has already become one of those films people cannot shake off after watching.