Oscar documentary ‘All the Empty Rooms’ explores silent bedrooms of school shooting victims

An Oscar-nominated short documentary is drawing national attention for its haunting look at the American school shooting epidemic through the untouched bedrooms of young victims.

"All the Empty Rooms" follows CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp as they document the personal spaces of four children killed in campus violence. The film features the rooms of victims including 14-year-old Dominic Blackwell and 9-year-old Hallie Scruggs, capturing the intimate details of lives cut short.

Hartman said the project was born from a sense that traditional tragedy coverage has become repetitive, leaving the American public increasingly desensitized.

The documentary avoids typical news conventions, such as witness interviews or policy analysis. Instead, it focuses on the personal items left behind in the children's rooms to convey the profound scale of loss.

The film's release comes amid a continuing surge in violence. According to CNN, there have been at least 78 school shootings in the United States so far in 2025, though that figure varies depending on how such incidents are defined.

The filmmakers said they hope this new perspective will move the public and spark meaningful action.

The defining strength of "All the Empty Rooms" lies in its calculatedly apolitical lens on one of the most polarized issues in the American landscape. By intentionally omitting the word "guns" and bypassing the standard policy dogmas, the film dismantles the reflexive partisan defensiveness that typically characterizes the debate. Rather than engaging in direct confrontation, it invites the audience into a sanctuary of private grief: the bedrooms of deceased children. The stillness of these rooms—preserved as if their occupants might return at any moment—serves as a more visceral indictment of the status quo than any legislative white paper or statistical data point.

This approach represents a deliberate communicative strategy aimed at a public increasingly "numb" to the cycle of violence, as director Joshua Seftel observes. The film makes no attempt to provide a policy roadmap or a definitive solution; instead, it forces a reckoning with the human cost of persistent legislative gridlock. Its primary efficacy lies not in the immediate prospect of regulatory overhaul, but in its potential to shift the underlying public sentiment that ultimately serves as the precursor to institutional change.

For Vietnamese-American families—from the vibrant hubs of Little Saigon to diaspora communities across the country—school safety remains a top priority. The looming shadow of campus gun violence is a sobering reality that every parent in America must now confront. This film is bound to resonate deeply within our community, as it speaks to the core Vietnamese value of protecting one’s children and the primal instinct to keep our families safe.