Ian Curtis is a quiet and rather sad lad who works for an employment agency and sings in a band called Warsaw. He meets a girl named Debbie whom he promptly marries and his band, of which the name in the meantime has been changed to Joy Division, gets more and more successful. Even though Debbie and he become parents, their relationship is going downhill rapidly and Ian starts an affair with Belgium Annik whom he met after one of the gigs and he's almost never at home. Ian also suffers from epilepsy and has no-good medication for it. He doesn't know how to handle the feelings he has for Debbie and Annik and the pressure the popularity of Joy Division and the energy performing costs him.
Written by
Marco van Hoof
Plot Synopsis:
-------------------

Control is the biography of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, taking his story from schoolboy days of 1973 to his suicide on the eve of the band's first American tour in 1980.

In this time we see Curtis grow from David Bowie-infatuated teen to Sex Pistols-inspired punk, and eventually to rising new wave star.

The movie explores the pressures he felt, from his epilepsy, a failing marriage, his new lover, and a band that relied on him - all in an attempt to explain his decision to hang himself at the age of 23.

The movie is based on Deborah Curtis's biography "Touching from a Distance" .

The actors playing Joy Division learned how to play the songs themselves. So the scenes where the band is playing live is not from tape, but actually the actors playing live.
------------------------

According to Samantha Morton, the director mortgaged his house to raise finance for the film.
------------------------

Sam Riley (who plays Ian Curtis) and Alexandra Maria Lara (who played his lover Annik Honore) married in August 2008 and now live in Berlin
------------------------

The poem being recited before their first gig is "Evidently Chicken Town" by John Cooper Clarke.
------------------------

When Joy Division are about to make their first television appearance they are warned by Tony Wilson that he will cut them off if they swear at any point. He also tells them to trust him as he knows when you can and can't swear on TV. This is probably a nod to years later, when in real life Tony Wilson was suspended from his job at Granada for swearing into a microphone that he didn't realize was on.
------------------------

The black-and-white film was actually shot in color, then transferred to black and white because, according to the director, the black and white film "was so grainy it looked like Super-8 even in 35 millimeter."
------------------------

After the exhausting filming of Das Boot (1981) German pop star Herbert Grönemeyer swore he'd never act in a movie again. He made an exception for his good friend Anton Corbijn and appeared in this movie, though.
------------------------

Actor Toby Kebbell, who plays Joy Division's manager Rob Gretton appeared in Dead Man's Shoes (2004) playing Paddy Considine's younger brother. Interestingly Paddy Considine himself also played Rob Gretton in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People (2002), which focused more on the biography of Tony Wilson and the Manchester music movement, and also partially featured a condensed time line for singer Ian Curtis' life.
------------------------

The scene showing Tony Wilson talking to Ian Curtis in the empty Derby Hall in Bury after the April 1980 riot features a large equipment case on which the number "501" prominently appears. When Tony Wilson was buried in August, 2007, his coffin was marked with the number 501, the last number in the Factory Records catalog.
------------------------

James Anthony Pearson, who plays Bernard Sumner, learned to play guitar in two months for his role in the film.
------------------------

The script for the film was written to be told in flashback. This was later changed by the director because he felt it was more emotional to follow Ian's journey linearly.
------------------------

The introduction that Tony Wilson gives the band as they're about to perform on Granada television is almost word for word taken from the actual broadcast. The song they play in the film is "Transmission", when in actuality they performed "Shadowplay" on Granada. They did perform "Transmission" live on TV but it was on the BBC without an introduction by Wilson, but instead a toned-down version of the poem used to introduce them at a gig in the film.
------------------------

Theatrical film debut of Anton Corbijn.
------------------------

There is an Echo and the Bunnymen poster behind Anik as she is interviewing the band.
------------------------

Samantha Moreton (Deborah Curtis) and Matthew McNulty (nick) both had roles in dramas about the moors murders, Samantha Moreton played Myra Hindley in Longford (2006) and Matthew McNulty played David Smith in See No Evil: The Moors Murders 2006.
------------------------

French visa # 118729.
------------------------

Finnish censorship visa register # 205559.
------------------------

Ian was watching the Werner Herzog film Stroszek on the television before he killed himself.
------------------------

Joy Division is shown performing "Transmission" on Tony Wilson's television show in September 1978, but in reality, they performed "Shadowplay". The performance that is represented in this scene actually took place a year later in September 1979 on the BBC2 program "Something Else", when they performed "Transmission" (a performance which was used as the music video for the song) and "She's Lost Control".
------------------------

In Ian's bathroom medicine cabinet is a bottle of Tigabine an anti-epileptic not available till the 1990's.
------------------------

In a song performance scene the guitarist is using Marshall Speaker Cabinets (model 1960A and 1960B). The speaker cabinets were not introduced until several years after Ian's death.
------------------------

When Ian is recording the vocals for "Isolation," he appears to be using a modern Shure KSM27 studio condenser microphone.
------------------------

Ian Curtis sits at home, watching the Werner Herzog film "Stroszek", opening a bottle of whiskey during a scene, where the mobile home of Stroszeks protagonists is auctioned off. In the next scene, presumably some time later, we see that Curtis is visibly intoxicated and that the bottle is almost empty; however, in "Stroszek" barely two minutes have gone by.
------------------------

Ian Curtis sits at home, watching the Werner Herzog film "Stroszek", opening a bottle of whiskey during a scene, where the mobile home of Stroszeks protagonists is auctioned off. In the next scene, presumably some time later, we see that Curtis is visibly intoxicated and that the bottle is almost empty. However, in "Stroszek" barely two minutes have gone by.
------------------------

On the contract signed in Tony's blood, drummer Stephen Morris' name is spelled Steven. (The band mocks Tony's lightheadedness from the blood loss by falsely telling him that "Morris" needs to have a second "s" added, but no mention is made of the misspelling of his first name.)
------------------------

0