Soderbergh’s Lennon doc debuts at Cannes amid AI backlash

Steven Soderbergh’s “John Lennon: The Last Interview” premiered Saturday at Cannes, featuring a previously unreleased two-hour 1980 interview with Lennon and Yoko Ono.letterboxd
About 10% of the film uses AI imagery from Meta ↗1.70% to visualize philosophical passages, a choice Soderbergh called necessary after exhausting other options.winnipegfreepress
Critics at Cannes overwhelmingly panned the AI visuals, though Soderbergh said he expected backlash and stressed transparency about the technology’s use.winnipegfreepress

Soderbergh Debuts AI-Enhanced Lennon Documentary at Cannes, Igniting Debate

Steven Soderbergh’s “John Lennon: The Last Interview” premiered Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, built around a previously unreleased two-hour radio interview John Lennon and Yoko Ono gave on Dec. 8, 1980 — hours before Lennon was shot and killed outside his Dakota apartment in New York. The film’s use of generative AI imagery, provided through a partnership with Meta, has drawn sharp criticism from reviewers and reignited an industrywide debate about artificial intelligence in cinema.

A Final Conversation, Heard in Full for the First Time

The documentary presents the complete interview for the first time. Lennon and Ono sat down with a San Francisco radio crew to promote their album “Double Fantasy,” and the wide-ranging conversation covered love, creativity, fatherhood, and life after the Beatles. Soderbergh told the Associated Press on Saturday that he “was just so compelled by their generosity of spirit throughout the conversation”.letterboxd

Roughly 90 percent of the film’s visuals are archival photographs and footage. For the remaining 10 percent — sections where the conversation turns abstract and philosophical — Soderbergh used Meta’s AI tools to generate what he described as “thematically surreal” imagery occupying “a dream space rather than a literal space”. The AI sequences amount to about 10 minutes spread across the 90-minute film.variety

Critics Pan the AI, Praise the Audio

Reviews from Cannes were largely hostile toward the AI-generated visuals. Screen Daily called them “egregious”, while the AP reported they were “overwhelmingly slammed by critics”. Soderbergh acknowledged the backlash was expected. “You don’t say yes to Meta offering you these tools and not know you’re going to come in for some heat,” he told the AP.screendaily

Soderbergh framed his defense around transparency, contrasting his approach with how AI is deployed without disclosure elsewhere. “I feel like I owe people the best version of whatever art I’m trying to make and total transparency about how I’m doing it,” he said. He also argued the technology was a practical necessity: after exhausting other visual solutions, “we just started playing and ran out of time and money. That’s where the Meta piece came in”.winnipegfreepress

A Wider Reckoning at Cannes

The documentary arrives as Cannes itself navigates a shifting relationship with AI and Silicon Valley. Meta replaced TikTok as the festival’s official partner this year, a move that has drawn its own scrutiny. Soderbergh, who previously won the Palme d’Or at age 26 for “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” said he believes most filmmaking jobs “cannot be performed by this tech and never will be,” but added that each creative discipline will develop its own relationship with AI. Sean Ono Lennon gave his blessing for the AI imagery, telling Soderbergh his father “would’ve wanted to engage” with the technology.nssmag

“John Lennon: The Last Interview” is currently seeking U.S. distribution.indiewire