All the Empty Rooms: Film Screening and Panel Conversation

Instructions

This event takes place at Yale Humanities Quadrangle, Room L02, 320 York Street, New Haven, CT 06511

• Free and open to the public

If you need technical assistance with registration or require accessible accommodations contact ysc.info@yale.edu.

Join us for a screening of the 2026 Academy Award-winning documentary short film, All the Empty Rooms, hosted by co-executive producers and current Yale parents, Roy and Mary Judelson P '26 (Alexander), and Yale Schwarzman Center. 

All the Empty Rooms follows veteran CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp as they embark on a seven-year-long project to document the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings. Hartman steps away from his heartwarming human-interest stories and pursues a piece on absence, memory, and the unseen ripples of America's gun violence epidemic. As these senseless incidents claim more young lives than any other cause in America, these quiet bedrooms reveal truths more powerful than statistics ever could. 

Following the screening, Dean Megan Ranney and Community Scholar Nelba Márquez-Greene—both from the Yale School of Public Health—will join correspondent Steve Hartman and director Joshua Seftel for a conversation moderated by Executive Producer Lisa Cortés’83. 

Meet the Artists:

Joshua Seftel

Steve Hartman

Lou Bopp

Lisa Cortés '83

Director’s Statement:

After Sandy Hook, Parkland, and so many other school shootings, I began to feel numb. As a parent of two little girls, it was hard to even let myself even think about the possibilities. Then, last year, my phone rang.

It was veteran CBS News Reporter Steve Hartman. In the late 90s, I was Steve’s producer as he became nationally known for telling one-of-a-kind uplifting, good news stories. But it had been twenty-five years since we had spoken.

Steve 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’t think he should be in the film.

I had two immediate comments. The first was “yes, this should be a documentary.” And the second was “Steve, you have to be in the film.” He agreed to both, and within weeks westarted production.

We traveled from Steve’s home in upstate New York to Nashville to Uvalde to Santa Clarita and back to the CBS News studios to document Steve’s 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 - allowing space for the viewer to be transported to the room.

After returning home, I came away with a new perspective on family and life in America. It’s impossible not to feel a greater sense of gratitude toward my children and a burning desire to change the course of this crisis.

Through this film I hope we’ve opened a door for all of us to step out of the numbness and rekindle an urgency to do something. 

- Director Joshua Seftel