Grimmest documentaries you've seen

[Deskbound Cunt]

The new C5 doc about the 'strip search' phone calls.

Deeply bizzare and upsetting.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj_h9nf88j_AhWbQEEAHXKSBpEQFnoECAoQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.channel5.com%2Fshow%2Fpredator-hunting-the-strip-search-caller&usg=AOvVaw0pgdJ2OB4w9k-2N8xMPtoc

The new C5 doc about the 'strip search' phone calls.

Deeply bizzare and upsetting.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj_h9nf88j_AhWbQEEAHXKSBpEQFnoECAoQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.channel5.com%2Fshow%2Fpredator-hunting-the-strip-search-caller&usg=AOvVaw0pgdJ2OB4w9k-2N8xMPtoc

And, yep, I watched the film Compliance a few years ago.

[bgmnts]

I'd highly recommend everyone watch Dominion, despite the grimness.

Probably essentially viewing really.

[Johnny Textface]

I'd highly recommend everyone watch Dominion, despite the grimness.

Probably essentially viewing really.

Documentary aye?

[Deskbound Cunt]

Documentary aye?

The single lol on this thread.

[bgmnts]

Documentary aye?

Yes, it's a documentary.

[Ferris]

Has anyone seen Fourteen Days in May?

Looks very grim, Louis Theroux mentioned it in an interview which piqued my interest but fucking hell.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Days_in_May

[iamcoop]

Has anyone seen Fourteen Days in May?

Looks very grim, Louis Theroux mentioned it in an interview which piqued my interest but fucking hell.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Days_in_May

It's probably the most upsetting documentary I've ever seen but it's absolutely amazing. It haunted me for months afterwards. Still does really.

I found it so affecting I actually emailed Clive Stafford Smith (the young British lawyer in the film who went on to found Reprieve) to ask him if he knew where I could watch the follow up film (which I don't think was ever shown on TV) and he very kindly posted me a DVD copy which I sent back to him after I'd watched it.

The best documentary ever made about Death Row in my opinion, and does an incredible job of highlighting the racism, barbarism and corruption of the US capital punishment system whilst treating the subject of the film and his family with dignity and respect and not forgetting that at the heart of this is a story about a frightened young man who's about to be killed by the state despite everybody knowing he was innocent.

[Ferris]

It's probably the most upsetting documentary I've ever seen but it's absolutely amazing. It haunted me for months afterwards. Still does really.

I found it so affecting I actually emailed Clive Stafford Smith (the young British lawyer in the film who went on to found Reprieve) to ask him if he knew where I could watch the follow up film (which I don't think was ever shown on TV) and he very kindly posted me a DVD copy which I sent back to him after I'd watched it.

The best documentary ever made about Death Row in my opinion, and does an incredible job of highlighting the racism, barbarism and corruption of the US capital punishment system whilst treating the subject of the film and his family with dignity and respect and not forgetting that at the heart of this is a story about a frightened young man who's about to be killed by the state despite everybody knowing he was innocent.

Just finished it, very powerful film. Bleak beyond belief, of course.

Nothing more to add really.

It is on youtube if anyone else wants to watch it.

[JaDanketies]

thought it was a bit slow-going tbh

Dominion is good tho and I reckon everyone ought to watch it, especially if you don't want to.

The one about the McDonalds prank call rapist was good, the first half is the grim bit but I enjoyed it all

[El Unicornio, mang]

Film about morning drinkers in NYC

[chuckles]

I finally found English subtitles for Tokyo Trial (1983), by Masaki Kobayashi with commentary by the evil boss from Harakiri. At 4hr 40min it's one of your big-boy war documentaries, and while being less filled with dead people photos than World At War etc, the grimness is really delivered through the pain of waiting so many years for closure (it took 2 days just to read the charges!), spending most of the duration in a room of hateful bastards - both Tojo smirking as his bald dome is slapped, and the Americans and Soviets failing to put their own sabre-rattling aside - and the futility of the whole thing, given that

Spoiler alert

Judge Webb eventually argues in favour of giving the trial up since he couldn't nab Hirohito.

[close]

Maybe close in style to those YouTube interrogation videos in that it goes on contextual tangents as topics come up in the courtroom, including CoD wedding footage coming out of nowhere, talk about grim!!

[Deskbound Cunt]

This waa a bloody grim watch last night.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/24-hours-in-police-custody/on-demand/73855-008

[Sonny_Jim]

Was reading up about Genie, a kid who was locked away and neglected so badly by her parents that she didn't learn language until she was a teenager and became an extremely interesting case study for linguistics.

From when she was a baby they would lock her in a room tied to a makeshift potty chair for days at a time.  She wasn't allowed to leave the room, her Dad would bark at her like a dog if she made any noise whatsoever.  Her toys were Tupperware containers, no one to talk to and nothing to look at it.  Proper grim stuff.  When she was eventually discovered by social services she barely knew how to walk:

CW: Little girl so badly traumatised she doesn't even know how to walk properly

Spoiler alert

[close]

That's a clip from a longer documentary by Nova, the full thing is here on archive.org.  I'm sure I watched a UK version of this, maybe a channel 4 one?  In any case it's such a harrowing story it really doesn't matter which documentary you watch, it's all super grim.

[Retinend]

Thanks @Sonny_Jim - I heard about this back when studying linguistics but I wasn't aware of this documentary. Will watch it soon.

[Sonny_Jim]

I'd say give the wikipedia article a good read first, as it provides a lot of context to the behavior of the various carers that the documentary tends to gloss over.  For example, the mother is given barely a mention.

[Retinend]

I'm revisiting the hell and travesty of justice that was the Iraq war. Have you ever seen the great documentary-maker Erol Morris's 2008 treatment of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Standard Operating Procedure?

It's unbelievably grim.

The depths of sadism that went on in that prison was worse than you remember. Men's heads and eyebrows shaved. Made to stand handcuffed for hours in crucifix-like positions. Burned with cigarettes. Sleep deprived for days. Disorienting music played at full blast while men were praying. Men handcuffed into sexual positions with other men. Men made to crawl naked in front of laughing female guards. Forced to masturbate in front of them. Handcuffed men made to sleep in hoods soaked in hotsauce. Made to be bitten by dogs. Death by purposeful neglect. Pure dominance and sadism.

I feel as if waterboarding was permitted to become the go-to example of US torture because it was the least visceral and least humiliating example of the torture that went on.

None of the guards are contrite, least of all the most famous interviewee, Lynndie England. Besides this film, I recommend this interview with her also from 2008 (the events of the film happened 2003-2004) to attest to this: https://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/lynndie-england--rumsfeld-knew--3086946.html



On an aesthetic note, the film is beautifully edited and put together. It's one of those documentaries where the subject matter is so sensational the simplest graphics can have a profound effect. As always with Morris, the use of impressionistic reconstructions (usually in slow motion and centred on a particular act) is tasteful and poignant.

Edit: actually, I take it back. There is one interviewee who seems sorry for her involvement, and not just because of her punishment or because of what negative effect it had on the US war effort. It's this one who is devilishly grinning in all her infamous photos, Sabrina Harman :



In fact, while this was going on, she was writing home to her partner about her deep moral doubts about the situation she was in. All the more shocking then, that someone who has these profound doubts, and is not a sadist, can follow sadistic orders and smile for the camera while doing so.

The guy behind her is the psychopath ringleader, Graner, who also seduced Lynndie England prior to making her his favourite model for these horrific pictures.

[Indomitable Spirit]

I recently listened to the first series of the podcast 'Blowback' - basically a leftist review of the Iraq War - and the episode about Abu Ghraib is one of the most chilling things I've ever listened to.

There is so much more to the official story (which is already bone chilling enough). It was closer to an abattoir than a prison.

If you have a strong stomach, it's worth scrolling through this annotated archive of Abu Ghraib pictures. Obviously NSFW (dead bodies, forced sexual acts, blood, torture and essentially every transgression you can commit against another human being). The place looks straight out of Texas Chain Saw Massacre and it seems timely to remind ourselves that the moral authority of the West is a con always.

[madhair60]

wow i don't know why i clicked that. huge mistake

[Retinend]

If you have a strong stomach, it's worth scrolling through this annotated archive of Abu Ghraib pictures. Obviously NSFW (dead bodies, forced sexual acts, blood, torture and essentially every transgression you can commit against another human being). The place looks straight out of Texas Chain Saw Massacre and it seems timely to remind ourselves that the moral authority of the West is a con always.

Thanks for this. I have never indulged in real-life gore videos or images, or other non-consensual images of torture, but I am just as convinced as I ever was that we (the cousin nations of the UK, the USA and Australia) are guilty of a crime, and to not be aware of these images is like forgetting a crime you committed.

"And then they covered my head again, and as I was doing whatever they . . .  whatever.  They told me [a prisoner] to stroke my penis and another penis that was in front of [a female guard].   As I was doing whatever they asked me to do, they removed the bag off my head and I saw my father. "

I think it's arguable which is more damaging - the traditional, gory kind of torture, or this kind of psychological torture (your body is mine, I handcuff it into the uncomfortable shapes I want, you are human shit, I cover you in your own shit shit, you are gay, I change your sexuality, your God has deserted you, I am your God now). An expert interviewee in another Abu Ghraib doc, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib from 2007, says that psychological torture has arguably longer effects. It's easy to dismiss a torturer as a bloodthirsty beast who maimed you, but it is hard to dismiss a torturer who got into your head and made you believe that you were a worthless animal yourself.

And of course this sort of torture sanctioned by the majesty of various states and suited politicians goes on all the time and has been going on since human beings have been around (torture being an all too human phenomenon). If we were in an army under the same circumstances we could be looking at ourselves in the photos, either as the guards or the prisoners.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

 I almost wish I wasn't atheist so I could feel these folk would have to answer to God after death.

[Sonny_Jim]

Watch a bunch of Alan Partridge wannabes talk about their company motors ✅

Watch various people literally drink themselves to death ✅

Watch a girl get isolated from human contact until they were 12 ✅

Watch a guy relate the story of the time his captors forced him to touch his Dads dick ❌

Nah I'll give that one a serve, thanks.

[madhair60]

I almost wish I wasn't atheist so I could feel these folk would have to answer to God after death.

good news: you are wrong, and they will!

[Glebe]

None of the guards are contrite, least of all the most famous interviewee, Lynndie England.

Via Wiki:

In 2012, following her release, she stated that she did not regret her actions. "Their (Iraqis') lives are better. They got the better end of the deal," she said. "They weren't innocent. They're trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It's like saying sorry to the enemy."

The 'better end of the deal'?!

"And then they covered my head again, and as I was doing whatever they . . .  whatever.  They told me [a prisoner] to stroke my penis and another penis that was in front of [a female guard].   As I was doing whatever they asked me to do, they removed the bag off my head and I saw my father. "

Fuck.

The sheer joy on the faces of the soldiers is actually the most disturbing thing in those photos . Don't think I could sit through that doc.

[BlodwynPig]

At least the Iraqi population can take comfort in the knowledge that Lynndie England and the other perpetrators are still behind bars where they belong.

[Retinend]

At least the Iraqi population can take comfort in the knowledge that Lynndie England and the other perpetrators are still behind bars where they belong.

[sarcasm detector explodes]

Yeah, of course they all got lenient sentences and early parole. The ringleader Graner served 6.5 years after being sentenced to 10. England was sentenced to three years and spent fewer than 2 years inside. These were hardest sentences out of the 11 who received punishment.