Browse 315 movies from ZDF/Arte
Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.
Aug 2025
A celebrity model couple are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged, alcoholic captain. What first appears Instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island in a struggle of hierarchy.
Sep 2022
Women enter and exit a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years after the author loses the woman he considers his one true love.
Sep 2004
In the French harbor city of Le Havre, an elderly shoeshiner with an ailing wife crosses paths with a young African refugee pursued by the police for deportation.
Sep 2011
In the heart of a botanical garden in a medieval university town in Germany stands a majestic ginkgo tree. This silent witness has observed over a century the quiet rhythms of transformation across three human lives. At three distinct moments across the 20th and 21st centuries, these people — each carrying their own questions and inner struggles — inevitably find themselves drawn into the presence of this tree, full of mystery and meaning.
Jan 2026
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
May 2009
A fictional account of one year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. On Christmas Eve 1877, Elisabeth, once idolized for her beauty, turns 40 and is officially deemed an old woman; she starts trying to maintain her public image.
Jul 2022
After relocating with her family to the countryside, a renowned pianist uncovers a life-shattering truth that forces her to confront the complexities of love, trust, and deception.
Sep 2026
Zimbabwe is at a crossroads. The leader of the opposition MDC party, Nelson Chamisa, challenges the old guard ZANU-PF led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, known as “The Crocodile.” The election tests both the ruling party and the opposition – how do they interpret principles of democracy in discourse and in practice?
Jun 2023
With her mother's diary in hand, Marina's search for official documents for university leads her to her biological family on the Atlantic coast. What starts as an administrative quest reveals long-buried family secrets.
Sep 2025
On a warm spring day in 1924, house maid and foundling Jane Fairchild finds herself alone on Mother's Day. Her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Niven, are out and she has the rare chance to spend quality time with her secret lover. Paul is the boy from the manor house nearby, Jane's long-term love despite the fact that he's engaged to be married to another woman, a childhood friend and daughter of his parents' friends. But events that neither can foresee will change the course of Jane's life forever.
Nov 2021
In 1971, due to the world premiere of Death in Venice, Italian director Lucino Visconti proclaimed his Tadzio as the world’s most beautiful boy. A shadow that today, 50 years later, weighs Björn Andrésen’s life.
Jul 2021
Between light and darkness stands Olfa, a Tunisian woman and the mother of four daughters. One day, her two older daughters disappear. To fill in their absence, the filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania invites professional actresses and invents a unique cinema experience that will lift the veil on Olfa and her daughters' life stories. An intimate journey of hope, rebellion, violence, transmission and sisterhood that will question the very foundations of our societies.
Jul 2023
In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband.
Apr 2018
Arriving in Helsinki, a nameless man is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs, miraculously recovering only to find that he has completely lost his memory. Back on the streets, he attempts to begin again from zero, befriending a moody dog and becoming besotted with a Salvation Army volunteer.
Mar 2002
After a Palestinian teen gets swept up into a West Bank protest, his mother recounts the family story of hope, courage and relentless struggle that led to this fateful moment.
A group of perfectly intelligent young people decide to react to society's cult of aimless, non-creative and non-responsible form intellect by living together in a community of 'idiots'. Their primary activity becomes going out into the world of 'normal' people and pretending to be mentally incompetent. They take advantage of this situation to create anarchy, and, by every possible means, to make those around them miserable.
May 1998
A veteran actress comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable reflection of herself when she agrees to take part in a revival of the play that launched her career 20 years earlier.
Aug 2014
A journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so called "Spider Killer", who believes he is cleansing the streets of sinners.
A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit.
Aug 2017