Steven Spielberg. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

Acclaimed filmmaker Steven Spielberg debuted on Saturday night at the Toronto International Film Festival his most personal movie yet, a semi-autobiographical drama about his Jewish identity and early years as an aspiring director.

“The Fabelmans” follows Sammy Fabelman, who is based on Spielberg, as he develops a love for filmmaking throughout his life, starting from his early childhood. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano play characters based on Spielberg’s parents and Seth Rogen stars as his father’s best friend.

The film’s trailer, released on Sunday, clearly shows that the Fabelmans are Jewish. A young Sammy is able to identify his house because its the only one in the neighborhood without Christmas lights and the family gathers together at one point to light the Hanukkah menorah. Later on in the trailer, the Fabelmans sit down for Shabbat dinner and in another scene Sammy is taunted at school for being Jewish. The film also addressed the marital problems between Spielberg’s parents, who eventually divorced.

The filmmaker — a three-time Oscar winner who has directed classics such as “Schindler’s List, “Jaws” and “E.T.” — co-wrote the script for “The Fabelmans” with Tony Kushner, who he most recently collaborated with on the “West Side Story” remake. “The Fabelmans” is Spielberg’s first-ever film to be officially entered at a film festival.

At a post-screening Q&A for the movie following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the “Munich” director said he wanted to do a film about his life for a while and he was pushed to get it done because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I don’t think anybody knew in March or April of 2020 what was going to be the state of the art, the state of life, even a year from then,” he explained. “I just felt that if I was going to leave anything behind, what was the thing that I really need to resolve and unpack about my mom and my dad and my sisters? It wasn’t now or never, but it almost felt that way.”

Kushner added: “I like very much the sort of easy way that Jewishness lives in this movie. It’s a very profound part of Steven’s identity, and of the Fablemans’ identity. But it’s a movie that’s about Jewish people, rather than entirely or exclusively about Jewishness or antisemitism or something. So it’s not a problem, it’s who they are.”

Spielberg also said that the antisemitic bullying he faced as a child was “only a small aspect of my life… it isn’t any kind of governing force in my life. But I was made very, very aware of being an outsider, early on.”

“I think in proportion of the film, it’s an aspect of his experience in that moment,” Kushner said about the antisemitic taunts Sammy faces in the movie. “It’s part of his arc, Sammy’s arc, towards reclaiming film and figuring out things that film can do.”

“The Fabelmans” will be released in theaters on Nov. 24.