One to One, a new feature documentary about John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s life in New York in the early 1970s will be released on April 11, 2025, on Imax screens, followed later this year with its television and streaming debuts on HBO and Max.
The film made its world premiere out-of-competition at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, followed by showings at the Telluride and Sundance festivals. The film, which has been acquired by Magnolia Pictures, features newly transferred and restored 16mm film footage including Lennon’s only full-length concert performances after The Beatles. It also offers a wealth of previously unseen and unheard personal archives, such as phone calls and home movies recorded and filmed by the couple themselves.
The key part of the film is devoted to the One to One Concerts at Madison Square Garden, where Lennon was accompanied by Yoko Ono, The Plastic Ono Band, Elephant’s Memory and Special Guests. The remixed concert audio was produced by Sean Ono Lennon.
Official Synopsis:
On August 30, 1972, in New York City, John Lennon played his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, a rollicking, dazzling performance from him and Yoko Ono. Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald’s riveting documentary takes that legendary musical event and uses it as the starting point to explore eighteen defining months in the lives of John and Yoko. By 1971 the couple was newly arrived in the United States— living in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watching a huge amount of American television. The film uses a riotous mélange of American TV to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the screen: the Vietnam War, The Price is Right, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Cronkite, The Waltons. As they experience a year of love and transformation in the US, John and Yoko begin to change their approach to protest — ultimately leading to the One to One concert, which was inspired by a Geraldo Rivera exposé they watched on TV. Filmed in a meticulously faithful reproduction of the NYC apartment the duo shared, ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO offers a bold new take on a seminal time in the lives of two of history’s most influential artists.
