Steven Spielberg puts his life on screen with new TIFF film The Fabelmans

Steven Spielberg has been one of the world's most successful film directors for over 40 years. But with his upcoming semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, the 75-year-old maestro is trying something new.

"I always found ways of putting my personal life into everything I've done," the filmmaker told reporters on the TIFF red carpet. 

"But this was a very focused, intentional story of coming-of-age. I've never made a coming-of-age story before, told one before, and I've never told one so close to my own experiences and so close to my own heart.

"The most challenging part was finding the cast that best represents my family," Spielberg added.

The director's latest effort tells the tale of Sammy Fabelman, a young aspiring filmmaker based on Spielberg's upbringing in 1950s postwar Arizona, weaving in the origins of his passion for filmmaking and the influence of his parents on his subsequent career.

Spielberg reunites with his frequent collaborator, Academy Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner, who has now written and co-written four of the director's films.

"Steven really likes to scare himself," Kushner told CBC News, referencing past collaborations on 2005's Munich, 2012's Lincoln and last year's West Side Story. "He likes to do things that he's never tried before. So in a way, this is a departure, but when he made the decision to do The Fabelmans it was the first time that he really made the decision to share his own life.

"It's a scary thing, to put your family up on the screen."

Among the cast are Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen and Paul Dano, and young actors like Julia Butters and Canadian-American Gabriel Labelle.

Vancouver-born Rogen, a filmmaker himself, said that he "wasn't going to squander the opportunity to be standing next to Steven Spielberg all day." Rogen plays Sammy's uncle in the film.

"I was very overt with my desire to learn from him, and I did not hide it," Rogen said on the red carpet. "I would ask him a billion questions all the time: why he was doing what he was doing, what he was going for, what the thought process was behind it.

"He seemed very happy and open to talking about it."

Dano, who plays a version of Spielberg's father in The Fabelmans, joked that he learned the director was a stubborn and strong-willed child.

"I feel proud of him for making this film, and I think you see it in his previous films now too once you see this: both of his parents either in him or in the characters in other films of his," Dano said.