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How True Was ‘Breaking Away’?

Breaking Away

BY MIKE LEONARD

Late last summer, a British film reviewer professed his love for Breaking Away, the Academy Award-winning 1979 movie set in Bloomington that will see the 35th anniversary of its premiere in July.

“I like films with a strong sense of place; where the location is almost a character in its own right,” Xan Brooks wrote in The Guardian. “Breaking Away cuts between a Bloomington campus of lavish college buildings and an abandoned quarry out in the woods. It then shows us the link between the two. Without Bloomington, there would be no Breaking Away. But without the quarry, there would be no Bloomington.”

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Bloom Magazine June/July 2026 (Issue 120)

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