
All the Empty Rooms
A short documentary film by Joshua Seftel
2025
34 minutes
World Premiere Telluride Film Festival 2025
Journeys Through Silent Spaces
Veteran reporter Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp undertake a poignant, years-long journey across America, seeking out the untouched childhood bedrooms of children whose lives were cut short by school shootings. In each “empty room,” they bear witness to more than just frozen décor: these are deeply personal memorials, full of toys, posters, and traces of a young life stilled.
Together they navigate conversations with grieving families, sift through the physical remnants of childhood, and attempt to transform silence into empathy. The film becomes both a visual collection of spaces left behind and a meditation on the human cost of gun violence, as Hartman and Bopp strive to give dignity, voice and memory back to the children whose lives ended too soon.