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Broken Social Scene Joins a Wave of Canadian Music Documentaries with 'It's All Gonna Break'

With new documentaries about Tegan and Sara and The Tragically Hip also debuting soon, it's a good time to be a Canadian music fan.

Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene

Red Light Management

Breaking news: a new documentary will chronicle the rise of Toronto icons Broken Social Scene.

The indie collective broke through onto the international stage with their 2002 album You Forgot It In People, establishing Toronto as a hub for adventurous rock and influencing countless Canadian artists to come.


Now, a documentary will tell the story of how they became a scene in the first place, with unearthed footage of recording sessions. It's All Gonna Break will premiere at Woodstock Film Festival on October 16, and news of the documentary comes with a trailer, available to watch below.

The trailer features glimpses of early jams that helped the collective coalesce as well as snippets of new interviews from collective members like Feist and Charles Spearin. "There was some kind of renaissance going on around 2000 in Toronto," a voiceover says, "the creativity was on fire."

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The documentary features a meta element — director Stephen Chung is shown on-screen explaining how he first tried to make this movie in the 2000s, but the band wouldn't agree to release it.

Many years and several BSS albums later, it's time for the story to be told.

"We all wanted something to happen," Metric & BSS's Emily Haines says in the trailer. "And it did."

It's All Gonna Break isn't the only documentary this fall to feature Canadian indie rock heroes.

A trailer also recently arrived for Tegan and Sara's new film, Fanatical, which tells the story of how their personal information was stolen around 2011, with the thief using it to catfish fans. Directed by Erin Lee Carr, Fanatical is coming to Disney+ on Oct. 18.

That doc played at the Toronto International Film Festival, which also featured the debut of the new Tragically Hip docuseries The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal. That series is coming to Prime Video on Nov. 20, the same home as the recent Celine Dion documentary.

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It's a good time to be a Canadian music fan.

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Executive of the Week: Justin West of Secret City Records on the Secrets of Independent Music Success​
FYI

Executive of the Week: Justin West of Secret City Records on the Secrets of Independent Music Success​

The man behind one of Canada's most successful indie labels talks about the late-blooming success of French-language streaming record-holder Patrick Watson, why he builds long-term relationships with artists, and why it's important for the indie sector to work together.

Justin West is a leader and advocate in Canada’s independent music scene, but he didn’t plan it out that way. When he started his record label Secret City Records in Montreal in the mid-2000s, it was out of necessity. He had met an artist he loved and wanted to build a career with, and the label was a means to do it. That artist was Patrick Watson, and 20 years later he — and Secret City — are more successful than ever.

West — a multiple time Billboard Canada Power Player – leads one of the biggest indie labels in Canada while also advocating for the sector on multiple boards both locally and internationally. When we speak to him for this Executive of the Week interview, he’s just returned from Banff for the National Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Culture, and is a central figure in discussions around the Online Streaming Act and collective negotiations with online streaming platforms.

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