The room that couldn't be cleaned, the time that stopped

A teddy bear on the bed, hair ties hanging on the door handle, hair tangled in a comb, and a toothpaste cap that couldn't be closed. The children in these rooms, whose owners seem ready to jump in at any time, no longer come back.

The Netflix documentary All the Empty Rooms visits the rooms of children who lost their lives in school shootings in the United States. 2012, 2018, 2022. Disasters that occurred at different times and in different regions have one thing in common. The ordinary walk to school became the last.

The reason why the 'Feeling News' reporter turned the camera

This project began with a suggestion from Steve Hartman, a veteran reporter for CBS in the United States. He, who has been telling the world's good stories through a corner called 'On the Road', declared, "I will no longer look for a positive perspective on school shootings." It was because of the realization that Americans, including himself, were becoming numb to the recurring disasters.

Hartman works with photographer Lou Boff to document the victims' rooms. Boff, who said, “This is my first project to photograph something without people,” captured unwashed clothes and untidy clutter through the lens because he was afraid that the child’s smell would disappear.

Parents speak out in unison. “I stop by the room every day to say good morning.” The child is gone, but the room remains a place of comfort and memories.

Instead of the perpetrator’s narrative, the children’s story

During the running time of about 35 minutes, the documentary does not analyze the perpetrator. Instead, the voices of the families tell us what the children who died at a young age, from ages 6 to 15, liked and dreamed of, and what their last memories were like.

When past images of dancing and playing intersect with the quiet room of the present, the darkness conveys the weight of loss that cannot be reduced to numbers.

A mother’s appeal on the Academy stage

This work won the Short Documentary Award at the 98th Academy Awards on March 15 (local time). Jackie's mother, Gloria Cazares, who passed away when she was 9, went on stage and said:

"From that day on, time stopped in Jackie's room. Jackie was not just a headline, she was our light and our life. Now that gun violence has become the number one cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States, I think America will change if we see children's empty rooms."

In the United States, guns have been the leading cause of death among people under 18 since 2020. The method chosen by this documentary is to make people face that reality not with statistics but with an empty room.

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Watching Information: Streaming on Netflix. You can see more photos of the children's rooms on the CBS News interactive page.