Bruce Springsteen Biopic Director Says Movie Sheds Light on Star’s Mental Illness: ‘His Most Painful Chapter’ (Exclusive)

The “most painful” chapter of Bruce Springsteen’s life is headed to the big screen.

At the New York Film Festival premiere of Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere on Sept. 28, director Scott Cooper told PEOPLE that the biopic, starring Jeremy Allen White, will “shed light” on the now 76-year-old musician’s struggle with mental illness.

“This is probably his most painful chapter, most vulnerable chapter of his life,” Cooper, 55, says of the rock legend. “He was just coming off of The River tour to great acclaim and success. Instead of chasing the roar of arenas and hit singles, he had the courage to look inward and face a lot of unresolved trauma that he had dealt with.”

The “result” of this introspection, the director says, “is — well, I think — his best album and one of the best albums of the last 50 years.”

“So to be able to tell that story and to shed light on Bruce’s mental illness, my hope is that folks who are struggling and don’t know how to get the help or the will to help will see that this is a very relatable story and will seek the help they need,” Cooper adds.

The Deliver Me from Nowhere director also says he hopes that Springsteen “going into therapy will hopefully destigmatize that,” particularly for other men — though that wasn’t something the filmmaker and subject discussed before making the film.

“We didn’t speak about it really because it isn’t a message movie about mental illness, but I think it’s a part of his creative process,” Cooper tells PEOPLE, “and when you see his creative process is about mining this unresolved trauma from his childhood that we all have in one form or another.”

“I think it’s a very relatable and powerful story, but it isn’t a message movie,” adds the director. “There’s a lot of music in the film, but it just happens to be his record Nebraska and not Born in the USA.”

Deliver Me from Nowhere “chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska album when he was a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggling to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past,” according to an official synopsis.

“Recorded on a 4-track recorder in Springsteen’s New Jersey bedroom, the album marked a pivotal time in his life and is considered one of his most enduring works — a raw, haunted acoustic record populated by lost souls searching for a reason to believe.”

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Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is in theaters Oct. 24.