ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Two recent Oscar winners have local ties. Film director Joshua Seftel and CBS News’ Steve Hartman recently took home the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film for “All the Empty Rooms,” which brings viewers inside the bedrooms of victims of school shootings.
“There’s something about seeing the bedrooms that makes it real, that takes it beyond a headline or a statistic,” explained Seftel.
The film director grew up in Niskayuna; he teamed up with CBS News Reporter Steve Hartman, who lives in Catskill, in order to shine light on the dark issue of gun violence in schools.
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Hartman is known for his feel-good stories, but as one school shooting after another flooded the news cycle, he felt they all started to blend together. He wanted to shake himself and America out of that numbness…