Netflix’s 'All the Empty Rooms' Trailer Will Make You Squeeze Your Kid a Little Tighter Tonight
“Every day I tell her good morning and every night I tell her goodnight,” a mom, who is talking about going into her daughter’s bedroom, tells CBS News reporter Steve Hartman in All The Empty Rooms. What should be an innocuous part of a parent’s daily routine is a devastating confession from a grieving mother who lost her daughter in a school shooting.
On December 1, Netflix will release the 33-minute documentary, which chronicles Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp’s seven-year journey to memorialize the bedrooms of children killed in school shootings across the US.
Hartman interviews parents, siblings, and friends impacted by gun violence, painting a heartbreaking picture of an America in crisis. “I wish that we could transport all Americans to stand in one of those bedrooms for just a few minutes,” Hartman says in a newly released trailer. “We’d be a different America.”
With photos and footage of the children who were lost, the film puts faces and stories to some of the more than 200 children who have been killed in school shootings in the U.S. since 1999. More heartbreakingly, the film shows the void they’ve left in the lives of the people who loved them.
What started as a CBS project turned into a film when Hartman reached out to director Joshua Seftel. “After Sandy Hook, Parkland, and so many other school shootings, I began to feel numb,” Seftel writes in a director’s statement, per Deadline. “As a parent of two little girls, it was hard to even let myself even think about the possibilities. Then, last year, my phone rang.”
“It was veteran CBS News Reporter Steve Hartman. In the late 90s, I was Steve’s producer as he became nationally known for telling one-of-a-kind uplifting, good news stories. But it had been twenty-five years since we had spoken.”
After agreeing to join the project, the team traveled to homes in Nashville, Uvalde, TX, and Santa Clarita, CA, collecting the real stories behind the statistics. “We get to know the children through the rooms they left behind,” Seftel adds. “They came to life for us, and the weight of their absence was crushing.”
“After returning home, I came away with a new perspective on family and life in America. It’s impossible not to feel a greater sense of gratitude toward my children and a burning desire to change the course of this crisis.”
Seftel concludes, “Through this film, I hope we’ve opened a door for all of us to step out of the numbness and rekindle an urgency to do something.”
Before you go, click here to see movies that tackle school shootings.