"All the Empty Rooms" wins Oscar for memorializing kids killed in school shootings

The documentary "All the Empty Rooms," which memorialized children killed successful schoolhouse shootings through a look astatine the bedrooms they ne'er returned to, took location the Oscar for Best Documentary Short astatine the 98th Academy Awards connected Sunday.

The movie follows CBS News analogous Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp along their seven-year travel to papers the toll of America's schoolhouse shooting epidemic. Director Joshua Seftel accepted the Oscar connected signifier alongside Hartman, shaper Conall Jones and Gloria Cazares, whose girl Jackie was killed successful the Uvalde schoolhouse shooting in 2022.

"The 4 bare rooms successful our movie belonged to 4 young children who were each killed successful schoolhouse shootings: Hallie, Gracie, Dominic and Jackie," Seftel told the assemblage earlier passing the mic to Cazares.

Wearing reddish formal and a pin with an representation of Jackie, Cazares spoke of her 9-year-old girl and appealed for an extremity to weapon violence.

"Since that day, her chamber has been frozen successful time," Cazares said. "Jackie is much than conscionable a headline. She is our airy and our life. Gun unit is present the fig 1 origin of decease successful kids and teens. We judge that if the satellite could spot their bare bedrooms, we'd beryllium a antithetic America."

Gloria Cazales, whose girl Jackie was killed successful the Uvalde schoolhouse shooting, stands alongside movie manager Joshua Seftel, shaper Conall Jones and CBS broadcaster Steve Hartman arsenic they judge the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film for "All The Empty Rooms" connected March 15, 2026. Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

When Hartman traveled to Uvalde, Texas, wherever a gunman killed 19 children and 2 teachers astatine Robb Elementary School, Cazares told him that radical are ever telling her that they can't ideate what she's going through. But she said we request to imagine, and that's wherefore she invited Hartman and Bopp into her home.

"It conscionable makes everything much existent for the public, for the world," Carazes said astatine the time. "Her country wholly conscionable speaks of who she was."

In Jackie's room, determination was the cocoa she had saved for a time that ne'er came, and an "About Me" chalkboard wherever she wrote that she wanted to beryllium a veterinarian erstwhile she grew up.

Many of the children's rooms, similar Jackie's, remained virtually untouched, years aft the shootings. 

"Their personalities shone done successful the smallest details of their untouched rooms — hairsbreadth ties connected a doorknob, a toothpaste conduit near uncapped, a ripped summons for a schoolhouse lawsuit — allowing maine to uncover glimpses arsenic to who they were," Bopp said successful an essay astir the task successful 2024.

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