🎥All The Empty Rooms (2025): The Short Documentary That America Won’t Forget

A stunning, soul-shaking meditation on the bedrooms left behind — and the children who will never return to them.

⭐ A Documentary That Stops You in Your Tracks

Every once in a generation, a film arrives that doesn’t just inform you — it stays with you. All The Empty Rooms is that film.

Directed and produced by Joshua Seftel, this 33-minute American short documentary is already being hailed as one of the most emotionally powerful films of 2025. After its world premiere at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2025, the impact was immediate: crowds were silent, critics shaken, and audiences describing it as “the most important short film of the decade.”

Netflix has acquired distribution rights, ensuring the film will reach millions. But long before the streaming deal, before the awards buzz, before the standing ovations — this film began in a quiet bedroom. And then another.And another.

🎬 What Is All The Empty Rooms About?

At its core, the film is a visual and emotional journey into absence.

Award-winning reporter Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp travel across the United States to photograph and document the untouched bedrooms of children killed in school shootings — rooms frozen in time, filled with the life these children should have lived.

These aren’t interviews.

These aren’t reenactments.

This is real silence — and the echoes inside it.

The Bedrooms Become Memorials

A superhero poster on the wall.

A graduation gown is still hanging in a closet.

A stuffed animalis still sitting at the edge of a bed.

Each room becomes a portrait of a young life interrupted — a story told not through words, but through what was left behind.

Instead of statistics, the film shows the aftermath in the most human way possible:

a pillow that won’t be slept on again, a desk that won’t be used, a light that won’t be switched off by small hands.

🌎 A Seven-Year Journey Across America

What began as a side project for Steve Hartman — one he kept hidden from bosses at CBS News — transformed into a seven-year cross-country mission. With photographer Lou Bopp, he visited families, listened to stories, and entered sacred spaces of grief and memory.

The film refuses sensationalism.

It chooses intimacy.

It chooses truth.

Hartman, long known for his uplifting “On the Road” stories, steps into the heaviest reporting of his career — and it shows. His quiet compassion guides the storytelling, while Bopp’s photography captures the stillness in breathtaking detail.

💔 Why This Film Matters Now More Than Ever

Gun violence is now the leading cause of death among American children.

But numbers can numb.

Stories awaken.

By preserving these rooms exactly as they were left, the film becomes a document of a national epidemic — preserved through the lens of memory rather than politics.

The result? A film that is not only devastating but necessary.

🌟 Festival Run & Awards

🎞 World Premiere

• Telluride Film Festival (Aug 31, 2025) — 52nd EditionStanding ovation. Award buzz ignites.

🎞 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) – Sept 10, 2025

• One of the most talked-about short docs of the festival.

🏆 Awards

• Subject Matter Award – Hamptons International Film Festival (2025)Recognized for fearless, essential storytelling.

📺 Netflix Acquisition

Netflix acquired the global distribution rights before TIFF — a strong sign of the platform’s confidence in the film’s cultural impact.

Expect a wide release and major awards push throughout 2026.

🎥 Behind the Film: The Creative Forces

Director

• Joshua Seftel — known for documentaries that fuse emotional storytelling with social urgency.

Producers

Joshua Seftel, Conall Jones, James Costa, Trevor Burgess

Executive Producers

A powerhouse lineup including:Adam McKay, Kevin Messick, Steve Kerr, Regina K. Scully, Lisa Cortés, Sigrid Dyekjær, Jon Levin, and more.

Co-Producers & Creative Team

A long list of respected filmmakers, editors, consultants, and advisors — including Dr. Chethan Sathya and Fred Guttenberg — ensure the film’s accuracy, impact, and ethical grounding.

Music

Original score by Alex Somers, whose ambient, emotional soundscapes deepen the film’s haunting visuals.

🔍 Why All The Empty Rooms Is Poised to Spark a National Conversation

This is more than a documentary.

It’s a memorial.

A call to awareness.

A plea for action.

Where many films talk about policy or debate solutions, All The Empty Rooms does something braver:It shows the cost — quietly, visually, unforgettably.

Viewers will walk away changed.

Parents will cling to their children tightly.

Lawmakers will have to look these empty spaces in the eye.

And because the film focuses on the physical, preserved rooms — it becomes timeless, universal, and irrefutable.

✨ Final Thoughts: A Film That America Needs — Even If It Hurts

All The Empty Rooms is not easy to watch.

But it is impossible to forget.

In a world of noise, this film chooses silence — and in that silence, we hear the echo of what has been lost, and what must be done.

When it lands on Netflix, it won’t just trend.

It will change people.

It will start conversations.

It will remind the world that behind every headline is a bedroom full of dreams that deserve to continue.

This isn’t just one of the best short documentaries of 2025.

It may be one of the most important films of the decade.