“Ready?”
“Yes.”
That first exchange is heard in darkness at the beginning of Joshua Seftel’s powerful, vital documentary short film, All the Empty Rooms. The words are spoken by Steve Hartman and Lou Bopp before they enter the home of a family affected by gun violence. What can you say about such immense loss? We are never ready to confront something so insurmountable, but Seftel invites us on a journey of healing, hope, and tenderness.
Hartman is a journalist known for his affable, friendly demeanor during his CBS News segments, but his reporting took an unexpected turn when he began covering the epidemic of school shootings in the United States. He explains in Seftel’s film that he was uncomfortable at how we moved on right before the next news story broke of another episode of terror. It has become a cycle in our country. We float from one heinous crime to the next, numb and horrified.
Seftel is a director who is not afraid to confront hatred or how it lingers in our psyche. He was nominated for his work on Stranger at the Gate, a film about a man who openly discussed his association with the darkness in his heart and mind. Empty Rooms, however, is about pain lingering in shared space as Seftel accompanies Hartman and Bopp to photograph the childhood bedrooms of those lost in school shootings. We visit the homes of Dominic Blackwell, Hallie Scruggs, Gracie Muehlberger, and Jackie Cazares. We meet their families and speak to their siblings. Each one of these children was murdered before the age of 16. We find items hidden under beds. We see the stuffed animals they held at night. We hear stories of how they enriched their parents’ lives. Joy and sadness live perilously close to one another.
In addition to speaking about how he, Hartman, and Bopp are three different journalists working together, Seftel explains that he views his film as one of hope. I noted to him that a film like Empty Rooms could’ve been drenched in bleakness, but there is a light emanating from it. The families featured in this film, and those who have experienced similar loss, deserve some light–that hope.
All the Empty Rooms is streaming now on Netflix.
