Most harrowing TV/film you have ever seen?

[Greensleeves]

Mine are:

Song for a Raggy Boy - beautifully made film, but I never, ever want to see it again
Sophie's Choice
Escape from Sobibor
Scum
Touching the Void

A old horror film, Suspiria. Absolutely terrifying. I was a fully grown adult and had to sleep with the light on for ages.
I couldn't possibly watch stuff like A Serbian Film, even the synopsis is revolting.

We Need to Talk About Kevin- well the book more so than the film, but the film is still harrowing. Made me petrified of having kids and somehow messing them up.

Festen - incredible and disturbing

We need to talk about Kevin

very good acting and writing but very disturbing

Pan's Labyrinth. Bad enough when I first watched it, now I have a daughter I know I'll never be able to watch it again. Shudder.

The Lovely Bones
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Changeling

'Life in a day'
Absolutely broke me. For anyone who hasn't seen it's a film made of videos submitted by people all over the world of 24 July 2010.

It's amazing, wonderful, heartbreaking and everything inbetween! I haven't been able to watch it again but I would recommend it to anyone.

There was another one in 2020 but if it's out I haven't seen it yet.

'This is us' was an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish too. Watched the finale last week, cried so hard I got a migraine and still feel genuinely devastated days later.

The Whistleblower - true story about the cover up of sex trafficking within the UN.

Some brutal scenes that have stayed with me..

Brilliant film though

It’s A Sin made me sob. Harrowing to know what was coming for those boys and so, so sad.

The film about the Tsunami with Naomi Watts and the film about the summer camp shooting in Norway.

It broke me. I could never watch it again.
I cried so much at the end I made myself ill and had to go to bed

As others have said :-

The Boy In The Striped Pajama’s
The Pianist

and The Human Centipede as that was based on what the doctors did the prisoners of one of the concentration camps

Holocaust films really really upset me more than any other as most of based on fact and I’m usually a mess by the end of them.

Oh just thought of another.
Son of Saul. (A particularly brutal Holocaust film.)

I saw the 2012 remake of A Bouquet of Barbed Wire and found is particularly disturbing, the characters were so unpredictable and it was something I was left thinking about for days after..

Sad ones:

Me before you (a carer starts a relationship with a paralysed man)

Seven pounds (Can't describe without giving away a spoiler)

The fault in our stars (two terminally ill teenagers who start a relationship)

The impossible (based on a true story of a family in the Thailand tsunami)

Stepmom (A step mother struggles to form a relationship with her stepchildren whilst their mother has terminal cancer)

Bangkok Hilton
The firing squad bit

Dear Zachary - A Letter to a Son About His Father. I watched this when I had a very young DS1 and I was terribly upset by it, although it is a very good film and it did subsequently help to bring about some big changes in Canada's legal system.
Schindler's List.
Pan's Labyrinth.

I had forgotten The Mist and it's harrowing ending!
I loved Seeking a Friend For the End of the World and watched it twice in two days. A similar film is an Australian one called These Final Hours which is bleak and makes you think about how brave you'd be in the same circumstances when the main character is desperately searching for oblivion and gets side tracked on an errand of mercy.
I think that I may watch all of these again.
On TV programmes that are harrowing, I just re-watched the BBC series Survivors last month of which the first two episodes were very harrowing especially in light of covid.

Deliverance when I was in my early 20's and the male rape scene soo disturbing and shocking and just really affected me.

A Cry for Help Tracey Thurman Story - was harrowing to watch. I watched it in the 90's and have never forgotten it.

I have a family connection to the Holocaust, and me, Dsis and two of my cousins were all sat down in my Nan’s living room when I was about 11 to watch Schindler’s List. Nan had already explained the family history, which made the film seem all the more real. I wasn’t traumatised but any means, but it was a really harrowing watch.
Based on sheer gratuitous violence and gore just for violence and gore sake, Cannibal Holocaust is fucking obscene and I’m really not all that surprised that the director was arrested and faced some pretty serious charges because the prosecution couldn’t believe that the graphic violence, animal cruelty and sexual violence wasn’t real. Not a film I’d be in a rush to watch again.

Oh, and On The Beach - the film of the Neville Shute book. Both the book and film are devastating. The book made me sob for hours!

A Cry for Help The Tracey Thurman Story. The most harrowing and heartbreaking film I have watched. I watched it in the 90's and have never forgotten it.

Braveheart. The end scene when he was being hung drawn and quartered was horrible. I had to go outside and breathe very deeply to stop myself from fainting. I absolutely hate seeing any violence on tv…can’t look…too upsetting how humanity can be so ugly

I was unaware of the existence of The War Game until I visited Hack Green nuclear bunker and they had an exhibition about it
Same. Just looked up Hack Green - still going strong. Might take the kids and can report back whether War Game snippets still there, although bits on youtube brought it all back to me.