Garden Store: A Family Friend

The ZAHRADNICTVÍ (GARDEN STORE) trilogy consists of three separate films, all taking place in Czechoslovakia, set against the backdrop of some of the most dramatic periods of the past century (1939-1959), starting with WWII, covering the period of post-war optimism, and ending with the rise of the Communist dictatorship. It tells the story of three related families: the family of an air radio operator, the family of the owner of a hair salon, and the family of a garden store owner. The trilogy encompasses twenty years of the lives of its characters, who had to live out the best years of their lives in these complicated times.

RODINNÝ PŘÍTEL (FAMILY FRIEND) is a melodrama set in the 1940s during the German occupation. Three young sisters, two of them with children, are awaiting the return of their imprisoned husbands and the fathers of their families. Jiří, a family friend and a physician, selflessly helps this small family group, constrained as it is by the war. The film is a story of love that cannot be fulfilled; it tells of faithfulness, desire, guilt and love; it is about departures and homecomings, and about family, parents and children. This is a family portrait seen from the perspective of women brought together by fate. (CinemArt)