PRODUCER Kate Spicer will hold a question-and-answer session after Monday’s 6.30pm screening of Mission To Lars (12A) at City Screen, York.

The characters in this documentary film are not alike: Lars Ulrich is a heavy metal god, the drummer of Metallica, while Tom Spicer has Fragile X Syndrome – a form of autism – and lives in a care home in a sleepy Devon seaside town.

Lars is touring the world, playing to 30,000 howling metal fans every night. Meanwhile, Tom has cherished a dream for 20 years: to meet his hero, Lars. Tom’s sister, London journalist Kate Spicer, and filmmaker brother, William Spicer, break Tom out of his care home and hit the road, taking him away from his familiar routines to Bristol, Heathrow, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and beyond. The resulting uplifting documentary was directed by James Moore and William Spicer, both experienced television directors, making their first feature-length film. “We had this fantasy of hitting the road with Tom and recreating some of the magic of our teenage years cruising around in £100 cars, eating Burger King and listening to heavy metal on the tape deck,” says Kate. “We thought it would be fun... bonding. We wanted to do something good for our brother. We were also sick of him endlessly asking.”

However, it does not take long before the dream becomes a nightmare as Tom’s disabilities, the dysfunctional family and Metallica’s labyrinthine backstage world threaten to thwart the mission at every turn.

All profits from the film are going to Mencap, for which the producers have raised £25,000 already. Everyone, from Tunng’s Mike Lindsay, who composed the incidental score, to soundtrack contributors Bob Dylan, Blur and Devendra Banhart, provided their music for free.

Mencap has supported the film from the outset, backing the entertaining way it tells the story of the confusing family dynamics around learning disability, and above all its portrait of Tom as a complex and likeable character, and “not as someone you see first as learning disabled and everything else second”. Tickets for Monday’s screening and Q and A can be booked on 0871 902 5726 or at picturehouses.co.uk