The Family Friend is the first instalment of the biggest film project yet from the auteur duo of director Jan Hřebejk and screenwriter Petr Jarchovský. The Garden Store trilogy is composed of three standalone films playing out on the backdrop of the most dramatic period of last century and chronologically preceding the popular film Cosy Dens (d. Jan Hřebejk, 1999). The Family Friend, the first film of the trilogy, is a romantic melodrama set during the German occupation of the 1940s, where three young women wait for the return of their imprisoned husbands and fathers: an aircraft radiotelegraph operator, the owner of a hairdressing salon and the owner of a gardening store. During their forced separation, their family friend and doctor Jiří selflessly helps the lonely women. The Family Friend is also a story of unfulfilled love and a forceful statement on guilt and innocence, desire and love, departures and returns, family and children.