Wednesday, May 21, 10 p.m. and until May 30 on arte.tv

The Furious (Les Misérables)

Literary adaptation, France 2019

Stéphane and his police colleagues keep order in the Parisian suburb of Monfermeil. Until one day a boy is injured during an operation and the situation escalates. Modern adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1862 classic.

Sunday, May 25, 9:40 a.m. and until August 8 on arte.tv

Houses of Art: Thomas Mann, the summer house in Nida

Documentary series, Germany 2023

Thomas Mann found peace and inspiration in his house on the Curonian Spit. When the National Socialists came to power, the idyll was shattered: the writer went into exile - and the house became a convalescent home for Wehrmacht soldiers. Today it is a memorial site.

Monday, May 26, 8:15 p.m. and until June 24 on arte.tv

The Buddenbrooks

Literary adaptation, Germany 2008

Lübeck, 19th century: Jean (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and Bethsy (Iris Berben) Buddenbrook belong to a merchant family that has earned its wealth for generations through the grain trade. The children's lives are predetermined. The sons are to become merchants, daughter Tony (Jessica Schwarz) is to marry in keeping with her station. This is what tradition dictates - but times have changed.

Monday, May 26, 11:10 p.m. and until November 23, 2025 on arte.tv

Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann and Lübeck

Cultural documentary, Germany 2025

When the family epic "Buddenbrooks. The Decline of a Family" was published in Lübeck in 1901, it caused a scandal: The city's inhabitants are outraged, feel hurt and caricatured - by an insider, the son of a senator, of all people. Nevertheless, the novel became a bestseller and earned Thomas Mann the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2929. How did it come about that the literary bourgeois terror of yore became an honorary citizen of the city?

Monday, May 26, 00:05 and until June 24 on arte.tv

Confessions of the impostor Thomas Mann

Documentary film, Germany 2024

No novel character has accompanied Thomas Mann for as long as the protagonist from "Confessions of Felix Krull, The Confessed Impostor" (1954). Are there parallels between the author and the impostor?

Until January 11, 2026 on arte.tv

"The Magic Mountain" - Thomas Mann's novel of the century

Documentary, Switzerland 2024

Thomas Mann published this monumental work in 1924 and worked on it for several years. During this time, the world changed - and so did the author: the German Empire became the Weimar Republic, the planned contemporary novel became a historical novel about a lost era, and the staunch conservative Thomas Mann became an even more staunch republican. "The Magic Mountain" concentrates the old, sick, decrepit Europe in the enclosed space of a Davos lung sanatorium. The documentary delves into the Zauberberg world with archive images and spectacular, newly shot footage: Literary and medical historians, historians and the novel's translator shed light on the dark and colorful cosmos of the Magic Mountain - and show how unassailably modern and topical the novel has remained.