san francisco — Steve Kerr, head coach of the Golden State Warriors, was one of the executive producers of “All the Empty Rooms,” which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
The 35-minute film tells how broadcast journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Pope told stories of how families memorialize the bedrooms of children killed in mass shootings. Kerr – whose father, then president of the American University of Beirut, was shot to death in 1984 – has long spoken of the need for common-sense gun regulation.
“I had nothing to do with the making of the film,” Kerr said Monday. “But I’m very proud to be associated with him.”
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Kerr — a nine-time NBA champion as a player and coach, who also coached USA Basketball to an Olympic gold medal at the 2024 Paris Games — said he didn’t hesitate when he was asked to be part of this project.
“They called me about a year ago and asked if I wanted to be an executive producer, which basically meant putting my name on it and helping promote it,” Kerr said. “It was a no-brainer, given my passion for this cause. After watching the film, I was struck by how beautiful and moving it was. It was an easy decision.”
Kerr has been making some screenings for Netflix in recent weeks, and wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times earlier this month about the film, detailing how he was drawn to the way director Joshua Seftel and others involved in the project told the stories of families who lost children in school shootings.
“What immediately concerns me is how the film listens to families,” Kerr wrote in that article. “It gives them a space to talk about their children without their stories being exploited for politics or spectacle. There is a dignity in that choice, which is hard to find in the way our country typically talks about gun violence.”
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Siftel accepted her Oscar on Sunday night, then handed the microphone to Gloria Cazares, the mother of a 9-year-old boy killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
“My daughter Jackie was 9 years old when she was killed in Uvalde,” Gloria Cazares said on stage. “Since that day, her bedroom has been frozen in time. Jackie is more than just a headline. She is our light and our life. Gun violence is now the number one cause of death among children and teens. We believe that if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we would be a different America.”
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Kerr is the second Warriors member to share an Oscar win in recent years: Golden State guard Stephen Curry was an executive producer of “The Queen of Basketball,” which won the documentary short film award in 2022.
Kerr was not in attendance at the Oscars — the Warriors played a game Sunday night, and he learned of the win in a group text to his family — and said he would not receive a statuette.
“I’m very passionate about this cause, but I don’t think this will turn me into a filmmaker,” Kerr said.
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