Andrew Horn, the music documentary filmmaker for We Are Twisted F**king Sister, the story of the world’s greatest bar band and its struggle to reach the big time, has died. He was 66 years old and passed from cancer in Berlin, according to friend Rebecca Lieb.

Horn wrote, directed and produced the 2014 documentary about Twisted Sister, a band that dominated the New York/New Jersey metropolitan clubs, but couldn’t get signed by a major record label. Its unique combination of hard rock and visual spectacle finally broke through in the heavy metal era of the 1980s, the band releasing the multi-platinum Stay Hungry on Atlantic Records. The album was fueled by its MTV video for the anthemic song, We’re Not Gonna Take It..

Horn was born in New York in Sept.1952 and graduated from the New York University School of the Arts. He made the 2004 film The Nomi Song, about influential German musician Klaus Nomi. The highly-visual Nomi was a natural lead-in to Twisted Sister, and Horn, who wasn’t yet a fan of the New York bar band, became intrigued with its struggle for respect and backstory.

Horn came to Berlin in 1989 via an exchange program on a fellowship, and remainder there. He shared a 2013 News & Documentary Emmy for his work on an American Experience installment about Jesse Owens.

He also produced the features Doomed Love (1984) and The Big Blue (1988) and the documentaries East Side Story (1997) and The Nomi Song, all premiered or screened at the Berlin Film Festival.

We Are Twisted F**king Sister premiered at Amsterdam’s International Documentary Film Festival.

Survivors include his brother, Chris, and son, Kai.