Romain Gavras directed two of the most violent and polarizing music videos of recent years: M.I.A.'s "Born Free" and Justice's "Stress". M.I.A. has been having a rough year, with newspaper controversies, a questionable album, and flubbed gigs, it seemed like the luck she had with "Paper Planes" surprisingly rising to cultural omnipotence somehow backfired. But the singer/rapper/firebrand will try to end things on an uptick with a tour of North America and Europe in the coming months.


Here, in summary, is the year's controversial super-violent short film/promo for the new single 'born free':

• A set of grim looking policemen are conducting raids on a grim - looking block of flats and targeting only young men with ginger hair. These men are rounded up, put in armoured buses, and taken away.


• There is a suggestion that there is some kind of movement to resist this state-controlled ginger-genocide, but whatever it is, we only see a glimpse of it in this film. Anyway, when the red-headed young men arrive at their destination – a desert – they're told to run for their lives, into the sunset. And when they pause, one of them (the youngest) is shot point blank in the head.


• Unsurprisingly, this is one of the moments that YouTube users have complained about. As visceral and thought-provoking as it may be, it also contravenes terms and conditions about levels of violence in user-uploaded content.


• And that's not the only reason it's controversial. MIA says that it's not a direct comment on a particular political situation – and since much of her lyrics touch on real situations of conflict and ethnic cleansing, that's completely plausible.