{"id":116688,"date":"2025-08-28T18:05:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T18:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/116688\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T18:05:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T18:05:26","slug":"netflix-acquires-doc-short-all-the-empty-rooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/116688\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix Acquires Doc Short ‘All the Empty Rooms’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe first film to be sold out of the 2025 Telluride Film Festival<\/a> is All the Empty Rooms<\/a>, a documentary short that chronicles CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman<\/a> and photographer Lou Bopp<\/a>\u2019s seven-year quest to memorialize the bedrooms of children killed in school shootings, which, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, Netflix<\/a> has bought and plans to push for awards recognition.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 33-minute tearjerker, which was directed by Joshua Seftel<\/a> (who was Oscar-nominated for his 2022 Malala Yousafzai doc short Stranger at the Gate), is one of five shorts that will be playing in Telluride\u2019s main program alongside dozens of features. Its world premiere screening will take place at the Le Pierre theater on Sunday at 7:45pm MDT, and Bopp\u2019s photographs featured in the film will be on display at the Ah Haa Gallery in town (155 W Pacific Ave.) throughout the long weekend.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPhotographs featured in All the Empty Rooms on display at the Ah Haa Gallery in Telluride<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film counts among its executive producers Adam McKay, the Oscar-winning filmmaker, and Steve Kerr, the NBA champion player and coach who lost his father to gun violence. McKay tells THR, \u201cFor many, gun violence and school shootings live only in statistics and headlines. This film takes us, in a very gentle way, into the intimate bottomless loss at the center of all of these preventable tragedies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film came about through the rekindling of an old friendship. \u201cAfter Sandy Hook, Parkland and so many other school shootings, I began to feel numb,\u201d Seftel tells THR. \u201cAs a parent of two little girls, it was hard to even let myself even think about the possibilities. Then, last year, my phone rang.\u00a0It was veteran CBS News reporter Steve Hartman. In the late \u201990s, I was Steve\u2019s producer as he became nationally known for telling one-of-a-kind uplifting, good news stories. But it had been 25 years since we had spoken.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSeftel continues, \u201cSteve told me his career was taking a turn. He had begun traveling around the country to create a news report about the empty bedrooms of children who had been killed in school shootings, and he asked if it might be worth exploring a documentary film about this journey. He also said he didn\u2019t think\u00a0he\u00a0should be in the film. I had two immediate comments. The first was, \u2018Yes, this should be a documentary.\u2019 And the second was, \u2018Steve, you have to be in the film.\u2019 He agreed to both, and within weeks we started production.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe traveled from Steve\u2019s home in upstate New York to Nashville to Uvalde to Santa Clarita and back to the CBS News studios to document Steve\u2019s final news report. And we get to know the children through the rooms they left behind. They came to life for us and the weight of their absence was crushing. We were filled with sadness and sorrow as we observed these rooms through a cinema verite approach \u2014 allowing space for the viewer to be transported to the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter returning home, I came away with a new perspective on family and life in America. It\u2019s impossible not to feel a greater sense of gratitude toward my children and a burning desire to change the course of this crisis.\u00a0Through this film I hope we\u2019ve opened a door for all of us to step out of the numbness and rekindle an urgency to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Telluride, All the Empty Rooms will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival and various regional film festivals before dropping on Netflix later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first film to be sold out of the 2025 Telluride Film Festival is All the Empty Rooms,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[75569,88,75570,75571,206,217,75572,75573,75574],"class_list":["post-116688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-all-the-empty-rooms","tag-entertainment","tag-joshua-seftel","tag-lou-bopp","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-steve-hartman","tag-telluride-2025","tag-telluride-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}