War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko won the Oscar for Best Animated Short and Sean Lennon took the opportunity to celebrate his mom, Yoko Ono. Filmmakers Dave Mullins and Brad Booker took the stage alongside Lennon, who capped off the acceptance speeches by calling out, “Happy Mother’s Day, Yoko!”
(For those confused by the shout out, today marks Mother’s Day in the U.K. while the U.S. traditionally celebrates in May).
“John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote a song, anti-war message we tried to honor with this film,” Mullins noted in his speech. He added of Sean Lennon, “We want to thank our executive producer and creative partner, who was amazing to work with.”
Backstage after the big win, Booker told Rolling Stone, “We never know what Sean’s gonna do. He’s very charming. He always comes up with the right thing to say. And that was the right thing to say. We love that family, and we got to meet Yoko. So we feel very blessed.”
War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko is an 11-minute animated film set in an alternate World War I reality. It follows two soldiers from opposite sides of the conflict who play a game of chess. It was inspired by Lennon and Ono’s song “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).”
Mullins said backstage that they felt a great responsibility basing the project on the iconic 1971 single. “The song’s been played, I think for John and Yoko, it’s their most famous song that they’ve played at this point,” he told reporters. “So we had to take it seriously. We really just looked at what John and Yoko were trying to say with the song. We had Sean Ono Lennon as a creative executive producer, and we just tried to honor the antiwar message, and tried to do it in a creative way that was fun and made you cry.”
The filmmakers said that when they started the project in 2021, it was before the start of the war in Ukraine. When they finished it last October, the conflict in Israel and Gaza was omnipresent.
“The song came out four days after I was born. So I feel very drawn to this. But it was very clear that Sean wanted this message to get back out into the world, and we’re very proud that we helped him deliver it,” Booker said.
“There’s a lot of fighting, there’s a lot of war, there’s other ways to solve it. And that’s what I think John and Yoko were trying to say, like, maybe talk a little more, kill a little less. That’s the idea, and that’s what we tried to show in the film,” Mullins said.
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