All The Empty Rooms: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
Oscar-winning documentary about the heartbreaking consequences of US school shootings
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
Whatever the problems of the UK school system may be, this short, Oscar-winning documentary brings home the awful reality of life in their American equivalent with shattering simplicity. Going from one house to the next, it visits the rooms left empty by children killed in school shootings.
Our guide is journalist Steve Hartman, who has been reporting on the topic since 1997. In that time, the number of shootings has risen from 17 to 132 per year and Hartman realised that he'd become so used to talking about it that he was repeating himself in the reports. Clearly that wasn't right and, as such, he set out to tackle the topic differently, in a way that would make the reality of it sink in for Americans.
And it's that effort the documentary captures, as Hartman and a photographer go from house to house, talking to the families and filming the rooms. The short film's impact lays not so much in what it tells you as what it shows you, in the way the footage captures a life stopped for no reason - particularly heartbreaking is the bedroom of 15-year-old Gracie, where the parents have discovered notes the teenager had written to her future self. (35 minutes)
