Synopsis

Manchester, 1976. Tony Wilson (Coogan) is an ambitious but frustrated local TV new reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After witnessing a life-changing concert by an unknown band called the Sex Pistols, he persuades his station to televise one of their performances, and soon Manchester's punk groups are clamoring for him to manage them. Riding the wave of a musical revolution, Wilson and his friends create the legendary Factory Records label and The Hacienda club, and bands like Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays emerge to change the industry forever.

Nominated for the Golden Palm Award, CANNES 2002
Winner - British Independent Film Award - Best Achievement in Production

- ''Shines with a kind of inspired madness… The movie works so well because it evokes genuine, not manufactured, nostalgia. It records a time when the inmates ran the asylum, when music lovers got away with murder. It loves its characters. It understands what the Sex Pistols started, and what the 1990s destroyed.''
- Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN TIMES