Le beau danger (2014)

Twenty minutes into his mesmerizing, formally inventive portrait of the legendary Romanian writer Norman Manea-a survivor of the concentration camps as a child who escaped the Ceausescu regime in 1986 and now lives in the U.S.-René Frolke does what few cinematic biographers dare to do: put their subjects' texts on screen. The inclusion of a complete story from Manea, which we read piecemeal throughout, is just one of the many playful moves Frolke makes in this collage-like, ceaselessly surprising, and deeply moving film. A study of the day-to-day business of intellectual life (panels, book signings, interviews), Le Beau Danger is also a sensitive meditation on the experience of exile.