A Lion in the House

When filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert got the proposal to make a film about children with cancer, they had just pulled their own teenage daughter through a year of chemotherapy. Still, they decided to begin on what would become a portrait of five young patients in the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. For six years, Bognar and Reichert followed the struggles of Alexandra (7), Justin (19), Tim (15), Jen (6) and Alex (11), their families and the medical staff against the life-threatening disease. They were present everywhere with their observant camera: when the parents were faced with impossible dilemmas, at meetings with doctors and nurses, at the sometimes inevitable funeral of a patient, but especially with the children, at home and in hospital. The courage, humour and resilience with which they live between relapse and remission is impressive. The film reveals that the diagnosis and subsequent treatment of a child have drastic consequences for the entire family: other children inevitably come second, and parents have to quit their jobs or even go on welfare. Special attention goes out to the question of when enough is enough, and to the parents' feelings of guilt and the lessons they learn along the way.