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What’s the grimmest, bleakest or most pessimistic film or tv show you’ve ever seen?

Most of the grimmest I've seen already mentioned - Come And See, Lilya 4-Ever, Funny Games - but would also add

Pixote (Brazil 1980) - just relentlessly grimy and sad, and its real life aftermath only punches that home (a superb film though)
Fateless (Hungary 20025) - Holocaust and its aftermath, where things don't improve that much...

I haven't seen it myself but the Russian film Cargo 200 from 2005 is supposed to be enough to traumatise anyone
 
Fez909 said:
Requiem For a Dream
Click to expand...
I tend to download films off random recommendations and I stumbled on Requiem that way.

A few months later, me and my gf in bed, on loads of mushrooms, looking for something cheery to watch thought, well this might be OK. 😬

Another call for Come and See.

I have a lot of ones mentioned here on a hard drive, but I'm consciously trying to watch happier things, so I'm dodging them for the time being. Maybe we need a thread for cheering, but good films. I seem to struggle to find them
 
salem said:
Christiane F - a German film set in 80s Berlin about a young girl and her friends who get addicted to Herion. True story and a great film but certainly bleak - both in the story and it's aesthetic
Click to expand...

that certainly sounds like Alan Clarke's Christine
(e2a spelling error)
 
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scifisam said:
In a different way to intentionally bleak (and enjoyable in a depressing way) films like Threads and the Plague Dogs, one of the most depressing films I've ever seen is This Is Forty. The couple in it just make each other miserable; the wife hates the husband and the husband reacts by running away emotionally. Everyone in it is vile. At one point it seems hopeful: they go on holiday and renew their feelings for each other. But nope, when they get back they're instantly the same as before, so the holiday was just there to drive home the message that, even when it seems like things might get better, they definitely won't.

It's presented as a comedy and genuinely left me feeling down for days.
Click to expand...
Revolutionary Road and Everlasting Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind had a similar effect on me. They made romantic relationships look so hopeless and doomed.
 
trabuquera said:
Most of the grimmest I've seen already mentioned - Come And See, Lilya 4-Ever, Funny Games - but would also add

Pixote (Brazil 1980) - just relentlessly grimy and sad, and its real life aftermath only punches that home (a superb film though)
Fateless (Hungary 20025) - Holocaust and its aftermath, where things don't improve that much...

I haven't seen it myself but the Russian film Cargo 200 from 2005 is supposed to be enough to traumatise anyone
Click to expand...
That reminds me of another Russian film - Loveless, about a neglected child - I didn’t finish it so maybe there was a Oliver Twist ending. I very much doubt it though.
 
Orang Utan said:
That reminds me of another Russian film - Loveless, about a neglected child - I didn’t finish it so maybe there was a Oliver Twist ending. I very much doubt it though.
Click to expand...

In the same vein, Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame is very bleak, about this 5 year old Afghan girl trying to go to school amidst the chaos of a post Taliban Afghanistan still heavily under the influence of their repression.
 
I've got it on a hard drive though not quite got myself in a place to watch it but The Painted Bird.

I read the book in the late 90s and that was so unrelentingly grim I don't think I finished it.

variety.com

Stop the Punishment! Why I Walked Out of ‘The Painted Bird’ (Column)

Variety film critic Peter Debruge explains why he couldn’t make it through “The Painted Bird” — and why there’s no shame in walking out.
variety.com variety.com
 
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Africa Addio [Farewell Africa] (1966) documentary - it's general racist pro-colonial tone, genocide [some maybe faked footage], the directors were arrested for making a snuff film after it was suspected they had orchestrated a scene were a man is executed [they were cleared], senseless animal killing, the bit with the truck driving over the multiple skeletal corpses covering a road, Utterly grim.

Life of Crime 1984-2020 (2021) - documentary following the lives of a group of US drug addicts over the course of three decades. They go through various lows and recoveries but the drug always wins.
 
Lurdan said:
Pasolini's Salo.

Saw it's UK premiere at the London Film Festival and had absolutely no idea what to expect. The showing was late morning in a cinema near Leicester Square. Came out into bright daylight and it felt like the streets had been soiled.
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I saw it at the Scala in Kings Cross and felt much the same on leaving. I decided not to read the book.
 
Another vote for Threads.

Was thinking that The Killing Fields is pretty bleak even with the ending.

Also, the original and remade films about the rugby team that crashed in the andes. Pretty grim and bleak
 
trabuquera said:
Most of the grimmest I've seen already mentioned - Come And See, Lilya 4-Ever, Funny Games - but would also add

Pixote (Brazil 1980) - just relentlessly grimy and sad, and its real life aftermath only punches that home (a superb film though)
Fateless (Hungary 20025) - Holocaust and its aftermath, where things don't improve that much...

I haven't seen it myself but the Russian film Cargo 200 from 2005 is supposed to be enough to traumatise anyone
Click to expand...
I’d forgotten about Pixote - I saw it when it was one of Channel 4’s “Red Triangle” late night films. Pretty grim.
 
Sweet FA said:
I've got it on a hard drive but not quite got myself in a place to watch it but The Painted Bird.

I read the book in the late 90s and that was so unrelentingly grim I don't think I finished it.

variety.com

Stop the Punishment! Why I Walked Out of ‘The Painted Bird’ (Column)

Variety film critic Peter Debruge explains why he couldn’t make it through “The Painted Bird” — and why there’s no shame in walking out.
variety.com variety.com
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's one of those ones that got good reviews but I just can't face watching. :(
 
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salem said:
Christiane F - a German film set in 80s Berlin about a young girl and her friends who get addicted to Herion. True story and a great film but certainly bleak - both in the story and it's aesthetic
Click to expand...
Read the book in German a good few years ago, very hard hitting.
 
I'm still obsessed with O-Bi O-Ba The End Of Civilization. Or Koniec cywilizacji, in the original.

My memory of it is with a different title: Arka. But that, according to the internet, is a different film.

Does anyone remember it? 1985 Poland, Krystyna Janda.
 
The Mexican film I'm Not Really Here is pretty bleak.

The thing I most wish I could unsee was a documentary on how Roma children were being taken from their parents in Eastern Europe and being put into homes where they were sexually abused.
 
seeformiles said:
I’d forgotten about Pixote - I saw it when it was one of Channel 4’s “Red Triangle” late night films. Pretty grim.
Click to expand...

Those Red Triangle films were an education. I always set the VHS recorder on those, and then settled in to get head fucked the next morning. I rarely had a clue what was going on in many of them as I was really too young at the time.
 
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