“My son, my sunshine, my beloved child.” A mother is overwhelmed by grief as she strokes the face of her son, a soldier lying in a coffin, killed on the frontline. Another week, another Ukrainian film about the terrible toll of the war. This documentary from film-maker Juri Rechinsky follows two evacuation missions in Ukraine: teams of volunteers transporting the elderly and frail from their homes to safety away from the front; and the operation to return the remains of fallen soldiers to their families. It’s a painful film, haunted by death, but also tender and moving, with a powerful message that compassion, love and resilience can be acts of defiance.

It opens with the evacuation of the elderly from their homes to a processing centre in a former hospital (where one volunteer addresses them “comrade grannies”). From here they will be relocated to more permanent housing. As she prepares to leave her flat, one woman frets: “My hair is a mess.” An English volunteer called Elizabeth is all gentleness, smiles and patience as she clasps the woman’s hands in her own. Rechinsky also films women and children getting on to trains leaving Ukraine, tugging along wheelie cases, babies bundled into their warmest onesies.

The second focus of the film is the work done by forensics teams and the military to recover and identify the remains of soldiers killed in battle. A man built like a wardrobe called Oleksandr (the credits give his nickname as “Bulldozer”) does the difficult, exhausting and risky job of driving bodies around the country back to their families. His white Transit van has soldiers with angel wings painted on the side. As it passes through one town, people line the streets kneeling on the kerb to honour the dead. It’s desperately sad.

• Dear Beautiful Beloved is on True Story from 20 February.