Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s brief hold on power as the first democratically elected president of independent, post-Soviet Georgia is captured in found-footage doc ‘Limitation’ by Elene Asatiani and Soso Dumbadze, who have assembled a chronology of the armed coup that overthrew him, solely using material gathered from the Internet.
We revisit the tension and uncertainty of this cliff-hanger wrangle for the future direction of the South Caucasus nation in all its raw immediacy. The year is 1991, a time of tumult as the Soviet Union is collapsing and breakaway movements are gaining momentum across Eastern Europe to overthrow Communist rule and Moscow’s yoke. It is an era before mobile phones and self-publishing on social media will take the consumption of images from war’s frontlines to saturation point for an always-online public. Asatiani and Dumbadze label their footage in general terms (election clips, international media, KGB cameras, pro-government and pro-opposition cameras) to broadly orient us through the various perspectives who have a stake in recording and interpreting the crisis, resulting in a vision of Gamsakhurdia’s overthrow that is critical of the Russian imperialism that backed it.
Limitation follows rising protests both against and for Gamsakhurdia’s government following his November 1991 inauguration. Just before Christmas, street fighting rages in Tbilisi, as the National Guard splits into two factions, and chaotic clashes, with grenade launchers and other heavy-duty weaponry, are filmed from vantage positions on both sides. Armed rebels lay siege to the parliament building, with the president and his supporters holed up inside. Foreign journalists who’ve made it into the building and are hungry for soundbites push for access to Gamsakhurdia. Two weeks into the siege he is still defiant but floundering, and pointing the finger at Eduard Scheverdnadze (former First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party) as a force behind the putsch, obstructing the hopes of independence to guard old Soviet power.
Established Georgian director Giorgi Ovashvili already put the ill-fated statesman onto more radars worldwide with his majestically gloomy, solid offering Khibula (2017), which enjoyed a modest festival run and portrayed Gamsakhurdia’s flight into the mountains after he unsuccessfully tried to retake power after the coup, using the more conventional format of historical drama to leverage suspense and mood-driven atmosphere. Audiences not already cognisant of the geopolitics of the region or especially interested in Georgian politics may struggle to fully immerse themselves in material presented with few guiding, narrativising markers in Limitation. Andrei Ujica’s comparable, widely-played and acclaimed portrayal of the rule and overthrow of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010), used a similar assemblage method, but benefitted from both a more sophisticated deep-dive into archives, and the global public’s greater familiarity and morbid fascination with its subject.
Regardless of prior levels of audience investment in this undeniably fascinating chapter of Georgian history, Limitation constitutes a frequently gripping reminder of the way in which history depends on who controls the angle (and camera), and documentary festival programmers should jump on it. What’s more, with Georgia’s current ruling party Georgian Dream accused of strong pro-Kremlin sympathies by the opposition and those who see the nation’s future as lying with closer allegiance to the European Union, and with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine still raging, the question of covert Russian influence is as urgently topical as ever.
The president is shown on camera denying accusations to international journalists that he had advocated for a Georgia for Georgians only that denied the rights of ethnic minorities, or that he had displayed tendencies of demagoguery (his opponents dub him a “Judas”), in a film that does not cover over criticisms of the leader or indulge in hagiography. The ideological motivations and political underpinnings of the coup are not examined in any great analytical depth, with space left for audiences to draw their own conclusions from an assemblage of telling moments — but it presents the power of Russia as shadowy, ever-present and unmistakable.
Directors: Elene Asatiani, Soso Dumbadze
Editor: Elene Asatiani
Writer, Producer: Soso Dumbadze
Sales: Soso Dumbadze (soso.dumbadze@gmx.de)
Venue: IDFA (International Competition)
In Georgian, English, Russian
125 minutes
