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

Like others it’s Watership Down for me as a kid and more recently, Broadchurch season 1. We decided to watch it when we’d just had our first child and it was so different to seeing something like that before we had kids, it took us 3 tries to make it through the first episode

Nil by Mouth? I think it was directed by Gary Oldman and was loosely based on his parents' relationship iirc.

There's lots of films that I 'enjoy' watching that are harrowing - Schindler's List, for example.

Grave of the Fireflies is one I won't ever watch though. I started it - ostensibly to gauge whether it was suitable for my children as they were on a Ghibli fix at the time - watched about 15 minutes, read the synopsis and cried so much I got a migraine.

Really overwhelming reaction - but tbh I really can't watch things where children are harmed in any way, especially boys the same age as mine. It hits too close to home!

Stella Does Tricks- depressing and disturbing.

Sorry We Missed You really broke me. A downward spiral into poverty with no apparent way out ☹
Tyrannosaur.
It's a Sin was uplifting in parts, but utterly harrowing and tragic. A wonderful series, beautifully acted, but oh so sad.

Hostel

Event Horizon. My faith hadn't lapsed as much as I thought.
Touching the Void. As harrowing as the book, and then he gets a Boney M earworm.
Eraserhead. The "baby". No, just no.
Battle of Haditha by Nick Broomfield, a dramadoc about a massacre carried out US troops in Iraq. Absolute evil all the way through the chain of command.

Two Lars Von Trier films for me

1. Breaking the Waves as previously mentioned by@Univalve - I was proper shoulder shuddering sobbing during that
2. Melancholia - the teepee broke me

Schindlers list
The Color purple
London to Brighton
Once were warriors

The Nightingale - currently on Netflix. Awfully violent but still a good story of revenge. Lots of famous people (Sam Clafin) make it just about watchable.

Dominion. Horrific and true.

Funny Games haunts me many years later. Something about watching the family when the audience know nothing can stop what happens to them is unbearable. For me that's the worst kind of horror.

See also, The Boy in the Striped Pjyamas - which I've probably said in similar threads I got drawn into and watched unawares only because I saw one of the actors in it and thought "oh look, that's Bishop Brennan from Father Ted! Let's see what he's like in something else!"

Just remembered another... The film Calvary with Brendan Gleeson and Chris O Dowd... My sister and I went to see it at an art house cinema in London.. Only about a dozen of us in there... The end was so shocking that we all walked out of the cinema is stunned silence!

I watched Tyrannosaur this afternoon because of this thread - it was superb. Bleak, dark, but funny at times and incredibly well-drawn. I love Olivia Colman.

I'd forgotten about Once Were Warriors, that's a seriously underrated film.

Haven't seen The Lovely Bones which a lot of people have mentioned; might give it a go tonight!

The war zone

Was really traumatised by The Plague Dogs as a child

Who Will Love My Children?

Manchester by the Sea

An American Crime was very upsetting, and Changeling was pretty horrible too. I try to avoid films I know I won't forget in that way.

The wind that shakes the barley - the lead character had the same full name as my grandad . Suddenly struck me that all my grandparents lived through that . Cried my eyes out the whole way through.

Boy in the striped pyjamas
Schindlers list
The Magdelen Sisters
Quite a few episodes of the tudors. Lots of executions.

The colour purple. Sobbed like a baby at the end. I'm that age, so Threads of course. Watership Down, which I watched at 17 when my mum was at the end of a long and pretty harrowing losing battle with cancer (the treatments 40 odd years ago were more brutal than the disease). The 'bright eyes' theme tune still makes my gut twist.

I will never be able to watch 'Old Yellow'.
Watched it as a kid and vowed then I would never watch it again...
In all honesty I actually can't remember the film as a whole (couldn't tell you any characters names, or even which country it was filmed in) but that ending will forever be a reminder that I definitely do not want to ever watch again.

Oh my goodness yes @packedlunches the Orphanage. The Spanish film? I watched it soon after I had my first baby. I was absolutely traumatised

I don't watch much harrowing stuff (never watched Schindler's List, for example) so can't contribute more than a couple of thoughts

Torchwood: Children of Earth. Glad I watched it, thought it was good, will never watch it again. The scene with Jack's daughter just outside the door...

Threads, on the other hand, had very little effect on me. Possibly because we watched it during a Humanities lesson? Age 14/15, soon after it was first shown. I remember noting the things they had chosen to include... yeah, probably because it was School.