Twenty-five years ago this summer, Steven Spielberg solidified his reputation as Hollywood’s reigning blockbuster king with the release of a not-so-little movie called Jurassic Park. Packed with breathtaking set-pieces and groundbreaking visual effects, the movie spawned a franchise that continues to this day in the form of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which arrives in theaters on June 22. What few realized at the time that Spielberg’s T. rex-size triumph was stomping through theaters is that its maker was in the process of radically transforming his career. In March 1993 — while still putting the finishing touches on Jurassic Park — the director called action on Schindler’s List, a searing Holocaust-era drama starring Liam Neeson as German businessman Oskar Schindler, who is credited with saving thousands of Jews from Nazi concentration camps.

Although Spielberg had previously tackled weighty subject matter in films like The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun, with its black-and-white cinematography and scenes of shocking violence, Schindler’s List promised to look and feel unlike any movie he had made before. Any doubts that he was the right person to tell this story dissipated when the film opened in theaters in December, scoring critical acclaim and multiple Oscar victories, including statues for Best Director and Best Picture. Schindler’s List marked a distinct turning point in Spielberg’s filmography as well; while he still made time for the occasional CGI-driven spectacle — like the recent Ready Player One — his focus increasingly turned toward period dramas ranging from 1998’s Saving Private Ryan to 2017’s The Post.

Since those films likely wouldn’t have been possible without Schindler’s List, the film understandably holds a special place in his heart. And the director very much wore his heart on his sleeve at a Q&A that followed a 25th anniversary screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. Sharing the stage with cast members Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Caroline Goodall, and Embeth Davidtz, Spielberg remarked with obvious emotion in his voice: “I know I have never felt, since Schindler’s List, the kind of pride and satisfaction and sense of real meaningful accomplishment.”

Here are five things we learned about the film from Spielberg and his collaborators.

Steven Spielberg had to wait 10 years to make Schindler’s List

In an alternate universe, Schindler’s List would have been Spielberg’s follow-up to his classic 1982 family film, E.T. In the wake of that megahit, Spielberg recalled his mentor and patron at Universal Studios, Sid Sheinberg, passing along a New York Times review of a book called Schindler’s Ark, by Thomas Keneally. “He said, ‘I have your next movie,’ and two hours later a messenger showed up with a cutout of the New York Times book section. I remember reading it, and even the review was dense. I got the book, and it took me a month to read it. I called Sid and said, ‘I don’t know how to tell this story, I just don’t.’ And I didn’t for a long time. A lot of other films had to happen first.”

View photos Liam Neeson and Sir Ben Kingsley in Schindler’s List. (Photo: Universal/Courtesy of Everett Collection) More

It’s not like Spielberg ignored Schindler’s story during that time; from 1982 to 1993, various drafts of the script were written until the director received a version — penned by Steve Zaillian — that reduced him and his wife, Kate Capshaw, to tears. “We got to the end of the script, and Kate said, ‘You’re making this movie right now, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, right now.’ But I was making Jurassic Park right now, that was the problem!” After a whirlwind preproduction process, Spielberg and his cast were on location in Auschwitz by March. “I had to go home about two or three times a week to get on a very crude satellite feed to Northern California, where ILM [Industrial Light and Magic] was in order to approve T. rex shots. It built a tremendous amount of resentment and anger that I had to go from [Schindler’s List] to dinosaurs chasing jeeps. I was very grateful later in June, but until then, it was a burden because this was all I cared about.”