Dolls, Games, and Friendship Bracelets: A Film About the Empty Bedrooms of School Shooting Victims | Documentaries

STiff Hartman has been a correspondent for CBS since 1996. He is known in the United States for his human interest stories. This month he reported on the retirement of a beloved New Jersey mailman after 33 years on the job, and a truck driver who spent two decades building a balsa wood replica of New York City.

But since 1997, Hartman has also begun reporting on school shootings, which have become a terrifyingly common feature of American life. (CNN reports that there will be at least 78 school shootings in 2025, although there is no universal definition for school shootings, meaning numbers vary depending on the source. Other reports suggest a much higher number.)

Hartman was trying to talk about the human angle, the hero’s story, but his attempts to find the light in the darkness started to seem repetitive. “I saw that America was moving out of every school shooting faster and faster every time,” he says in the stunning short documentary All the Empty Rooms. Eight years ago, he decided to try a different approach.

All the Empty Rooms, recently nominated for an Oscar, offers another way to look. Over the course of 34 harrowing, sensitive, and urgent minutes, the film follows Hartman and photographer Lou Pope as they visit and photograph the bedrooms of four children killed in a school shooting. Dominic Blackwell was fourteen years old. Haley Scruggs was nine years old. Jackie Cazares was nine years old. Gracie Muhlberger was fifteen years old. Its small details will likely destroy you. SpongeBob SquarePants Pen Pot. Friendship bracelets. Children’s writings, scribbled on mirrors, on memory boards, on notes written to their future selves, hidden in trinket boxes. A laundry basket full of unwashed clothes.

Bob is in his apartment in New York, clearly still finding it difficult to talk about the experience. “At the beginning of my career, I went to Afghanistan and took pictures of poachers in South America erupting volcanoes,” he says. “There were a lot of scary moments. But here I was sitting in a hotel, the night before a bedroom shoot in Parkland, Florida, and I had never been so scared.” Bob had known Hartman for decades — Hartman once lived in Bob’s basement — and when his friend asked him if he would take these photos, he immediately said yes. “I thought it was one of the most brilliant and poignant ideas I had ever heard,” he says. “I hope people feel something when they see this. If people could just walk into these rooms, I think it would change a lot.”

It’s a sunny morning in Nashville, and Jada Scruggs is calling from the family home. “After Haley was killed, our world became completely closed, and we were bombarded by the press, who wanted information and quotes from us,” she says. The third anniversary of her daughter’s death is approaching. She says they didn’t have the ability to respond, nor anything they wanted to say publicly. “We were absolutely heartbroken.” A few months later, Hartmann wrote to them and asked if they would participate in the photography project. They were the first family to agree.

Bob’s photos were printed into hardcover books and given to families afterward. “We thought this might be a good thing for us in the future.” Scruggs says they love talking about Haley. “We wanted Haley to be known, and this was a good way for us to be able to talk about her and share her.” What does she want people to know about her daughter? “Haley was full of life and a lot of joy. She was happy and loved to laugh. She was athletic.”

Her room is filled with sports memorabilia, books, a miniature pool table, and a karaoke microphone under her bed. Scruggs hopes Haley’s outburst will appear in the film, which it does. “And how much she is valued as a family member. Her absence is a gap that we will never be able to fill. I hope the film captures that.”

Families’ engagement is strong. Everyone involved is driven by hope for what the film might be able to achieve. Scruggs says she hopes for “real, real change.” What does that look like? “A lot of this is going to be politics, and people are going to have to want the politics to change. I hope the film will motivate people to want that change, and act on it. Because no one wants this for people.”

“This case is stuck here,” says the film’s director, Joshua Seftel, speaking from his home in Brooklyn, New York. “Nothing is moving forward the way it should be. People are numb. People who care about this are numb. There are over 100 school shootings a year. We can’t even keep track of them all.” He says there was a mass shooting two days ago, and little is known about it. “Before, this wasn’t normal, but now it’s normal and we’re numb.”

Seftel felt that if anyone could pull people out of this state of paralysis, it would be Hartmann. “In our country, Steve Hartman is known to a lot of people, he is trusted, and he is not a politician. I think he can be a very powerful messenger.” The documentary points out that the word “gun” is never used. “It was very intentional,” Seftel admits. “Even that word is polarizing, and it’s sad to say.” But is it possible for him to stand outside politics, in such a hot and partisan climate? “In many ways, it’s not a political issue,” he answers. They wanted to avoid giving any viewer a reason to turn this movie off. “Sending your kids to school and not worrying about them getting shot is not a political issue. It’s something we all agree on. There’s no debate about that.” He hopes these bedrooms can break through the numbness. “You have to feel the full weight of the problem before we can find a solution, and we don’t feel it anymore.”

Did he find that there was a reluctance to watch it? “Sure. I’ve heard that. People are afraid. They don’t want to feel sad. But what would you say to the parent who lost their child, who asked you to watch this movie? They want you to know their child’s story and what happened to them.” He realized that people might find it difficult. “But I tell myself, ‘OK, you can keep looking away, but in this situation, change is unlikely to come.’ He also points out that it is a nice, quiet film. “This movie is about the beauty of life. It shows the little details of life that are so beautiful.” “We get to know these kids,” he says.

Bob says he would like every person in the United States to stand in one of these bedrooms for 15 minutes. “And see what it looks like and how real it is,” he says. He believes that this is how change will come. “This isn’t just a headline. It happens, and the next day the newspaper will print another one, and this continues for the family. Years later, here we are in these bedrooms, largely untouched.”