Control

Control (2007) is Anton Corbijn's biographical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Shot in stark black and white, it follows Ian Curtis, the voice of the Manchester band Joy Division.

Curtis marries young, still basically a schoolboy in the small town of Macclesfield. Then the music pulls him onto a stage, and the ordinary life he built starts to come apart. His wife Debbie waits at home; a Belgian journalist named Annik keeps turning up on tour; and he can't bring himself to let go of either. Layered over all of it is epilepsy — seizures that strike mid-performance and medication that frays his mind as badly as the illness does. Anyone who knows the band knows where this ends, and the film walks toward it quietly, without melodrama.

Before features, Corbijn spent two decades photographing musicians, and every frame here carries that eye. Sam Riley plays Curtis so closely you could mistake him for archive footage, with Samantha Morton and Alexandra Maria Lara alongside. The film premiered to acclaim at Cannes in the Directors' Fortnight. Stream Control (2007) online on iFILM.