Work began on Joy Division in January 2003. After completing a Pilot-Film and a series of Photographic Tests, castings took place in London, Berlin, Munich and Budapest. In keeping with the nature of story, the director was certain that each cast member should be from the same country as the character they would play.

In order to find the right locations to recreate the events depicted in the screenplay, the producers, director and principal crew recced all over Germany, Hungary, the United Kingdom and Canada until they found the most suitable sites.

The production took the decision to shoot the winter scenes during the peak of the central / eastern European winter, as to stage the harsh winter of 1945 would have been virtually impossible to do artificially and in addition the authenticity of the elements acted as an aid to the cast and vast numbers of extras. A similar decision was made concerning parts of the screenplay set in the summer.

Much of Joy Division was filmed on location and in total the production built 5 town-sets in order to recreate the war torn East German scenes. Further location sets were built elsewhere for Mexico and 1960’s London.

Though parts of present day London have changed since the 1960’s, the production team were able to find and shoot certain areas of London itself, carefully framing each scene so as not to affect the period continuity.

The concept for the look of Joy Division was that each time-period setting would have it’s own contrasting style. The colour for the 1944 sequences is reminiscent of mid 40’s era colour film stock. Whereas the 1945 combat scenes are desaturated and shot with more hand-held movement, befitting the events that unfold. The 1960’s segments take on a different style all together; the cinematic grammar is more a kin to that which can be seen in period movies and the colour is reminiscent of the traditional Technicolor and is highly saturated. Again by contrast the Soviet scenes are austere and similar in colour to that of old Russian film stock – predominantly Red and White. Whereas finally, the late 60’s Mexican sequence has a slickness and feels hot and sun drenched.

Post production sound was carried out at Shepperton Studios, England and the musical score was recorded in Bratislava, Slovakia. Test shoots took place in Alberta, Canada, and Germany. Principal photography in Hungary and the United Kingdom.