10 Disturbing Movies You'll Struggle To Finish

Thirty years before Son Of Saul shocked audiences at the Cannes Film Festival, Russian director Elem Klimov made what is arguably the most brutally effective anti-war film of all time. It's so effective that Steven Spielberg is said to have shown it to his crew before he shot both Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan.

While most World War 2 films focus primarily on the experiences of the soldiers, Klimov instead chose to concentrate on the experiences of a young boy called Flyora from Belarus caught up in the partisan fighting against the invading Nazis. Over the course of the movie Flyora goes from wide-eyed innocence to utterly destroyed by his experiences, in a truly incredible performance (especially considering he wasn't a professional actor) in which it was rumoured Klimov even used hypnosis to heighten the emotional resonance.

The true horror of war and its impact upon the civilian population has never been so effectively captured on film. The scene in which the Nazis deal with the "problem" of the population of a Belarusian village is likely to remain embedded in your consciousness for the rest of your life - once seen, it is impossible to forget.