"When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 it became clear to anyone that the aggressor was conducting a hybrid war against Ukraine. It conquered Crimea with a combination of disinformation, propaganda, and secret military support for rebel groups, and covert military operations. The only surprise is that many people were surprised when Russia deployed this military strategy, because it has a long history of doing so.

Limitation examines the involvement of Russia in the 1992 coup d’état that overthrew Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who was elected as Georgia’s first president in 1991. The film draws exclusively on Internet-sourced footage that was shot during the armed rebellion that brought down the head of state. The source for each news item, interview, and report is given, whether that’s the Georgian government, the opposition, international news media, or “unknown.” Each side has its own truth—for the opposition, Gamsakhurdia is a “dictator” and a “Judas.”

Russia, meanwhile, plays a murky but decisive role by arming the opposition with military equipment such as grenade launchers and tanks. Gamsakhurdia’s fate was sealed, and he left the country in 1992." - IDFA

-- Dir. Elene Asatiani, Soso Dumbadze - 125min - 2023 - Georgia --

"the horror is palpable. The lo-fi aesthetics of Limitation bristle with radical agitation, dismantling ideals about the pure, objective image and stressing the idea that, regardless of visual quality, all recorded footage is infected with hidden agendas and motives. Amid a sea of contradicting political arguments, what remains terrifyingly present in this film is the collective trauma thrust upon ordinary people, forever scarred by bloodshed." - Guardian

"an archival horror film, a riveting account of an authoritarian uprising as depicted by the official cameramen of both sides. Adopting a terse mode evocative of the recent found–footage work of Sergei Loznitsa, and forgoing contextual titles, narration, or interviews, Asatiani and Dumbadze allow the fateful concatenation of events to unspool one raw, precipitous episode at a time." - Museum of the Moving Image

"as this film conveys, the best storytellers are the city streets....it’s natural that an impulse to collect images surges, as such times of war make archives most urgent and most vulnerable. Collecting this footage, and all its complications, in a contained, narrative format is a means of activating this history, and challenging our conception of how the past is recorded, preserved, and learned." - Reverse Shot

"A raw and immediate found-footage assemblage, 'Limitation' traces Russia’s hand in the coup that overthrew Georgia’s first post-Soviet president Zviad Gamsakhurdia." - The Film Verdict