With his fifth feature, Theo Angelopoulos turns to the dawn of the twentieth century for a politically charged fable centred upon the leader of a revolutionary commune, who causes an international incident when he takes a group of British aristocrats hostage.

Loosely based upon the Dilesi massacre of 1870 and interweaving Greek Orthodox and Byzantine liturgy, music, and ritual, Alexander the Great, was Angelopoulos's most narratively linear and politically dense work to date and remains a striking testament to the corrupting nature of power.