Reading Mary Beard's Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern prompted author Alexander Kluge to produce a series of stories, commentaries, interviews, and short films-reflections on a form of politics in which the power of a state is essentially concentrated in one person. This model of rulership had its origins in the system established by the Caesars in late Roman antiquity; it was perpetuated in the medieval emperors and Russian tsars and is now being brought back into play by authoritarian movements as a horizon of expectation. How does the "distant mirror" held up by the empirical world of the ancients enable us to identify today's version of Caesarism?Alexander Kluge, (b. 1932 in Halberstadt) is a screenwriter, film and TV producer, writer, philosopher, and one of the most influential exponents of New German Cinema.