Covering a five-year period in time, A Lion in the House, is an independent film documentary that shares an intimate look into the stories of five children -- Alex, 7, Tim, 16, Justin, 19, Jen, 6, and Al, 11 -- and their families as they battle pediatric cancer. PBS will air the film as part of its Independent Lens series this Wednesday evening. Check local listings for the time in your area or visit the PBS A Lion in the House website. While at the film's website hosted by PBS, you can learn more about each child and their family, and read the Filmmaker's Journal, a journal in diary form that shares the thoughts and feelings of the directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert and crew as they film this extraordinary journey through the struggles children and their families face trying to survive cancer.

Before making the documentary, the director's teenage daughter had just survived her own diagnosis of cancer. Now, Julie Reichert has recently been diagnosed with cancer herself and says about the film, "We were present for intimate, scary, inspiring and altogether heart-rending events. Points of view often diverged and nerves frayed as very hard decisions were faced every day. But everyone we observed cared deeply, no one was a bad guy, everyone was trying their best. Witnessing their courage, their commitment, their persistence and their tremendous heart was an incredible inspiration to me as we filmed, and it has been an incredible source of strength and wisdom for me since my own diagnosis."

The title of the film, A Lion in the House is inspired by the movie Out of Africa and a line from it: "You know you are truly alive when you are living among lions." According to the directors, the line was a metaphor that cancer was a lion that could kill you at any moment, a terribly scary beast in the house.