One of the Oscar winners has an emotional connection to South Florida.
“All the Empty Rooms” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. It explores the pain of families who lost children in school shootings, and it does so by taking viewers into the bedrooms of those kids.
“We have been working with them since 2018, so for all this to come together, the documentary, and for them to win an Oscar, is incredible,” said Broward School Board member Lori Alhadeff.
Her daughter, Alyssa, was among the 17 murdered in the Parkland tragedy, and Alyssa’s room is shown in the film.
“Alyssa’s soccer bag, her MSD soccer bag,” Alhadeff said, showing us Alyssa’s everyday things.
She kept it all, from her cellphone to her lip gloss to school supplies. Every mundane item packs an emotional punch. That’s the premise of “All the Empty Rooms.” Journalist Steve Hartman spent seven years traveling the country, documenting the empty bedrooms.
“This is in the documentary, this is a picture of Alyssa and her best friend, Abby,” Alhadeff said, showing us a picture from a photo book given to her by the film’s producers.
For Alhadeff, the Netflix film is a gut punch, but it’s also a chance to re-engage the public.
“The documentary helps to continue the conversation. Unfortunately, we only tend to talk about school shootings after the last tragedy. I want people to be more proactive about school safety,” Alhadeff said. “You know, I go around the country speaking about school safety, and a lot of people live in the bubble. I lived in the Parkland bubble; I never thought this tragedy would happen here.”
The film, Alhadeff says, reinforces the need to protect the reforms Florida signed into law in the aftermath of the MSD High School Massacre in 2018.
“We have saved lives through the red flag laws, and having a guardian or SRO at every school, and we need to keep the age to purchase guns, keep it at 21 years old, it’s working, it’s saving lives, and it’s helping to protect our communities and our schools,” Alhadeff said.
In her own home, Alyssa’s room is now her brother’s room, and Alhadeff has the same thought every time she walks in there.
“That Alyssa should still be here, it’s very painful that she’s not,” she said.
Alhadeff became a school board member to focus on school security, and she runs her own nonprofit organization called “Make Our Schools Safe.” When she retires from the school board this year, she will devote all of her time to her school safety efforts, all to honor the memory and legacy of her daughter.