diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index f2bd191..c2580e5 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -953,6 +953,18 @@ the user when it detects an issue:
     such as `-M` or `-C` would break assumptions used in other places of
     filter-repo.
 
+  * Partial-repo filtering does not mesh well with filter-repo's "avoid
+    mixing old and new history" design.  filter-repo has some capability in
+    this area but it is undocumented, mostly untested, and may require
+    multiple non-obvious flags to be set to make sane use of it.  While
+    there might be valid usecases for partial-repo filtering, the only ones
+    I've run into in the wild are sidestepping filter-branch's insanely
+    slow execution on commits that would not be changed by the filters in
+    question anyway (which is largely irrelevant since filter-repo is
+    multiple orders of magnitude faster), or to do operations better suited
+    to git-rebase(1) and which rebase grew special options for years ago
+    (e.g. the `--signoff` option).
+
 ### Comments on reversibility
 
 Some people are interested in reversibility of of a rewrite; e.g. rewrite
diff --git a/git-filter-repo b/git-filter-repo
index f8f8fc1..ea76ad3 100755
--- a/git-filter-repo
+++ b/git-filter-repo
@@ -1521,8 +1521,8 @@ class FilteringOptions(object):
                "Will not modify your repo."))
 
     refs = parser.add_argument_group(title=_("Git References"))
-    refs.add_argument('--refs', action='store_const', const=['--all'],
-                      default=['--all'], help=argparse.SUPPRESS)
+    refs.add_argument('--refs', nargs='*', default=['--all'],
+                      help=argparse.SUPPRESS)
 
     path = parser.add_argument_group(title=_("Filtering based on paths "
                                              "(see also --filename-callback)"))
@@ -3159,7 +3159,7 @@ class RepoFilter(object):
       location = ['-C', self._args.source] if self._args.source else []
       fep_cmd = ['git'] + location + ['fast-export', '--show-original-ids',
                  '--signed-tags=strip', '--tag-of-filtered-object=rewrite',
-                 '--fake-missing-tagger'
+                 '--fake-missing-tagger', '--reference-excluded-parents'
                  ] + extra_flags + self._args.refs
       self._fep = subprocess.Popen(fep_cmd, bufsize=-1, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
       self._input = self._fep.stdout
diff --git a/t/t9390-filter-repo.sh b/t/t9390-filter-repo.sh
index e97f128..2c6b861 100755
--- a/t/t9390-filter-repo.sh
+++ b/t/t9390-filter-repo.sh
@@ -1025,6 +1025,23 @@ test_expect_success '--target' '
 	test 2 = $(git -C target rev-list --count master)
 '
 
+test_expect_success '--refs' '
+	git init refs &&
+	(
+		cd refs &&
+		git checkout -b other &&
+		echo hello >world &&
+		git add world &&
+		git commit -m init
+	) &&
+	git -C refs rev-parse other >refs/expect &&
+	git -C analyze_me rev-parse master >refs/expect &&
+	git filter-repo --source analyze_me --target refs --refs master --force &&
+	git -C refs rev-parse other >refs/actual &&
+	git -C refs rev-parse master >refs/actual &&
+	test_cmp refs/expect refs/actual
+'
+
 test_expect_success 'reset to specific refs' '
 	test_create_repo reset_to_specific_refs &&
 	(