'BEATLEMANIA WASN'T LIKE TAYLOR SWIFT - IT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE, LIKE A METEORITE'

Sean Ono Lennon has a timely festive message in his Oscar-winning film inspired by his parents' song, Happy Xmas (War is Over) - and a thumbs-up to the actor who's about to play his dad.

- Craig McLean

A couple of hours before we speak, the headline in the Liverpool Echo reads: "Sean Ono Lennon sends vital message." The paper was talking about a projection on the beautiful facade of the city's Maritime Museum-the message in question being the title of the musician and filmmaker's Oscar-winning short, War is Over!

The trailer for the film was playing on repeat on the brickwork overlooking the Albert Dock. And the city was, of course, the hometown of his father, John Lennon.

This, finally, is the launch of an 11-minute animation with a powerful antiwar message, a fundraising component in aid of War Child and an emotional climax in the timeless sound of Lennon's 1971 activist carol Happy Xmas (War is Over). As the film's subtitle has it, it was "Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko", and it grew out of an idea to make a 50th anniversary pop video for the song. But despite that straightforward brief, and the beautiful mini-masterpiece winning the 2024 Academy Award for best animated short film, it's taken Ono Lennon over five years - and the help of a Pixar stalwart and Beatles' documentarian Peter Jackson - to get to this month's release. Now, when the 50-year-old, who is in a long-term relationship with musician and artist Charlotte Kemp Muhl, beams in from his home in New York, I ask how important it was to him that Liverpool was the location for the grand unveiling of the film ahead of its appearance on YouTube.

"It's very heartening for me," replies a man whose aquiline features and curtains of dark, shoulder-length hair make him an exact, equal composite of both his father and his mother, Yoko Ono. "It's been a long road. The film was finished over a year ago, so I'm so happy that everything's coming together and aligning."