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A man tries to make sense of his relationship with the woman who gave birth to him in this drama co-directed by Claude Miller and his son Nathan Miller. When he was five years old, Thomas Jouvet (Vincent Rottiers) and his brother Patrick were abandoned by their mother, Julie (Sophie Cattani), without any clue of why she chose to walk away from them. While Thomas was adopted by a caring couple, Yves (Yves Verhoeven) and Annie (Christine Citti), young Thomas (Maxime Renard) became an angry and rebellious kid, and he found himself shipped off to a boarding school after too many fistfights with his classmates. Deciding he needs to confront his mother about what happened when he was five, teenage Thomas slips away from school and manages to obtain Julie's address, but when he sees her, he's too shaken to talk and simply walks away. It's not until Thomas is a grown man working in an auto repair shop that he works up the nerve to introduce himself to Julie in hopes of making his way back into her life, though by this time she has another young son whom she's looking after on her own. Je Suis Heureux Que Ma Mere Soit Vivante (aka I'm Glad My Mother Is Alive) received its world premiere at the 2009 Venice International Film Festival.