Juri Rechinsky is not stranger to harsh realities. His previous films Sickfuckpeople (2013), Ugly (2017, produced by Ulrich Seidl) and Signs of War (2022) all dealt with profoundly hopeless characters. This time he masterfully captures the devastating impact of the Ukrainian war. Cinematographers Serhiy Stefan Stetsenko and Serafin Spitzer focus on the most vulnerable people: the sick and the elderly.

The walls of an apartment building are dilapidated. British volunteer Elizabeth enters the apartment of an elderly woman. The place is in disarray, a clear sign the owner had to pack quickly. The elderly woman cannot move on her own, so she is placed on a stretcher and carried outside, where she is loaded into a small bus. This is an evacuation scene. This is summer 2022. The war is at full throttle.

Military forensic experts collect the remains of a young soldier’s body on the battlefield. “Is this his leg?” they ask each other. A man nicknamed Bulldozer transports the remains. He has been driving for three days straight. His task is to deliver the body to Lviv, in Western Ukraine. He makes many stops along his journey. The relatives of the fallen phone him constantly, asking when he will arrive. The driver, tense and exhausted, jokes with his volunteer assistant about how he would love some vodka and a sauna right now. The time is November 2022.

Dear Beautiful Beloved is a film about the living and the dead, about their final journey from the war zone to safer areas. Elderly evacuees find refuge at the Ocean of Kindness care home in Dnipro, while the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers are brought to their families. “Dear, beautiful, beloved,” a mother cries over her son’s corpse, holding his hand and stroking his head. It gets even more harrowing. In the morgue, bodies are sewn up, washed, and dressed. For many elderly evacuees, this is their final journey in life. Some were abandoned by their children, who fled abroad. One such woman tearfully recounts her story to silent companions on an evacuation train.

Rechinsky’s latest film isn’t merely an observation of war, or a compilation of horrific images. The stories are bursting with humanity and compassion. Dear Beautiful Beloved navigates the delicate balance between empathy and stark realism. The moments of intimate suffering are never exploitative. The juxtaposition of the living (frail elderly evacuees clinging to a fragment of hope) and the dead (their remains are handled with reverence) underscores the fragility of life, while also highlighting the brutality of the conflict.

The director skilfully avoids sentimentalism in favour of small, barely noticeable gestures of courage. Elizabeth and Bulldozer become quiet heroes in this tragedy, driven by an unspoken sense of duty that propels them through the chaos. Their humour, their feelings of exhaustion and despair are palpable, and genuinely humbling.

Dear Beautiful Beloved is a searing commentary on the collateral damage of war, not just on infrastructure or military strategy, but also on lives and livelihoods. Lives are casually disrupted, displaced, and destroyed. It challenges the viewer to confront the tragedy in its integrity. There is no room for indifference. By weaving together stories of the vulnerable and the voiceless, the film calls upon its audience to bear witness to the ongoing suffering and to remember those who might otherwise be forgotten.

Rechinsky’s unflinching gaze captures both the visible and invisible scars of war, ultimately offering a sobering reflection on the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable loss.

Dear Beautiful Beloved premiered at Locarno. It also showed at IDFA.