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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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Intro

Billboard Canada 2025 Power Players List Revealed

By Richard Trapunski, Rosie Long Decter, Peony Hirwani, Stefano Rebuli and Heather Taylor-Singh

Billboard Canada Power Players is back for a second year, and it comes at a pivotal time for Canadian music. Canadian Content regulations – a principle that built the domestic industry – are up for review for the first time in a generation, with ongoing hearings taking place with the CRTC. The Online Streaming Act, meanwhile, is attempting to regulate major foreign streaming services to contribute to CanCon as the CRTC once did for radio, but companies like Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music aren't taking it without a fight.

Those issues shadow the industry, which has both struggles and successes. The country was recently named the 8th largest music market in the world by the IFPI and Toronto has emerged as a marquee live music market. That's been reflected in the successes and investments in new venues by companies like Live Nation Canada, MLSE and Oak View Group, though some festivals and promoters outside of their orbit have gone public with their own struggles.

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