Brotherhood, a Maltese documentary on the metal scene on the island, won the Best Documentary award at Toronto’s Alternative Film Festival. The film, spanning a full 80 minutes, was presented the award in the Feature Category.

“We applied online while searching for a few festivals that would suit the movie, and since it was open worldwide, we gave it a shot,” director Nicholas Bonello told Lovin Malta. “Being super passionate about all local music, let alone metal, it’s great that something I worked on was seen and acknowledged abroad.”

“It means a lot to us that our hard work was recognised across the globe,” producer Malcolm Alden told Lovin Malta. “We’re happy to help in any way to promote the Maltese metal community. Tt was always our goal to try and reward and expose the talent here.”

Brotherhood: A Story of Metal in Malta offers exactly what it promises. Figure of Speech Productions were busy capturing some of the biggest events in the local metal scene of the last months, and with such a rich and dedicated scene, the film soon came to life with gigs galore. 

From the all-too-familiar dirty garage complexes of Marsa and Birkirkara to the long-awaited album launches which leave no stone unturned, Brotherhood is as intricate of a tell-all on the Maltese metal scene as it gets. And of course, it touches on the decades of stigma that the scene and its members have had to endure.

The documentary also features interviews with some of the biggest names in the scene, including Clubmurder, Loathe, Martyrium, Beheaded, Abysmal Torment and Forsaken.

Brotherhood was officially screened at the Embassy Cinemas in Valletta back in September, and was then shown again at St. James Cavalier’s Spazju Kreattiv later in October. 

Now, Malcolm and Nicholas are hoping to be able to release it to a wider audience. “We’ll be starting a crowdfunding campaign in early 2018 for a DVD and BluRay release,” Malcolm told Lovin Malta.

With both Malcolm and Nicholas being active members of the Maltese metal scene, this film clearly comes from a passionate place. It also features an original score by David Depasquale, a big name in the scene thanks to his work at Spinesplitter Studios.

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David Grech Urpani

Lovin Malta's Head of Content, Dave has been in journalism for the better half of the last decade. Prefers Instagram, but has been known to doomscroll on TikTok. Loves chicken, women's clothes and Kanye West (most of the time).