Four hundred schoolboys in crimson tracksuits famously haunted social media feeds, moving with a synchronized, terrifying grace across a rain-slicked Leeds playground. This is “Storm,” the centerpiece of director Romain Gavras’ latest creative explosion, and it feels less like a music video and more like a high-definition broadcast from a future we aren’t quite ready to inhabit.

There is no teacher in sight, only the oppressive weight of a leaden sky and a machinic, low-end rumble that hits you in the gut like a heartbeat under duress. Gavras, the French provocateur who famously torched the internet with M.I.A.’s “Born Free” and the hyper-violent “Stress” for Justice, has never been a merchant of subtlety. But with his new audio-visual takeover, Visions of 2034, which commanded the cavernous halls of London’s 180 Studios in late 2023, he’s evolved. He has moved beyond the simple shock of the new and into something far more immersive, unsettling, and strangely beautiful.

Romain Gavras Gregory Jankilevitsch
Romain Gavras Gregory Jankilevitsch — Photo: Sara Komatsu / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The project is a high-stakes collaboration with Benoit Heitz—the musician and producer better known as Surkin, operating here under the moniker GENER8ION. Together, they’ve crafted a triptych of short films that imagine a near-future defined by ritual, rebellion, and a cold, digital-age spirituality. The viral surge of “Storm,” featuring the detached, haunting vocals of Swedish rapper Yung Lean, tapped into a specific cultural nerve. It isn’t just a clip; it’s a piece of world-building so tactile it feels disturbingly plausible. When the footage hit TikTok and X in late 2023, it triggered a deluge of frantic queries from a new generation of fans who might not remember the shockwaves Gavras sent through the industry a decade ago. The sheer scale of it—hundreds of children executing complex, kinetic choreography—is a masterclass in the cinematic power of the crowd.

The Architecture of the Uncanny Valley

To understand why Visions of 2034 feels so heavy, you have to look at the creative heavy hitters in the room. Gavras didn’t just point a camera at a group of kids; he enlisted Damien Jalet, the visionary choreographer responsible for the visceral, bone-snapping movements in Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria and Gavras’ own Netflix epic Athena. Jalet’s touch is unmistakable. In “Storm,” the movements aren’t “dances” in any traditional sense; they are collective spasms, military drills that have mutated into something occult. The boys clamber over one another, forming human waves and staring into the lens with a blank intensity that has sparked heated debates in comment sections from London to Seoul.

The choice of Leeds as the backdrop for this dystopian vision was a masterstroke of location scouting. Gavras and Heitz wanted a setting that felt grounded in the industrial reality of Northern England but elevated to a mythic status. Those red tracksuits pop with a violent intensity against the brutalist architecture, creating a visual language that feels simultaneously fascist and fashion-forward. It is a trick Gavras has mastered before—most notably in the desert drag-racing of M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls”—where he takes a specific subculture and turns the volume up until it becomes something alien and unrecognizable.

Benoit Heitz’s score provides the connective tissue for these fever dreams. As GENER8ION, Heitz has shed the neon-soaked French Touch of his early career in favor of a more atmospheric, textured soundscape. “Storm” isn’t a club banger; it’s a slow-burn anthem for a crumbling stadium. Yung Lean’s vocals float over the heavy synths like a ghost in the machine, adding a layer of detached melancholy. It is the kind of collaboration that feels inevitable in retrospect—two artists who specialize in the “uncanny valley” of modern pop culture finally joining forces to score the apocalypse.

A Triptych of Our Shared Future

While “Storm” served as the gateway drug for most fans, the exhibition at 180 The Strand offered a much wider lens on this speculative decade. Visions of 2034 consists of three primary chapters: “Neo Surf,” “Agra,” and “Storm.” Each one explores a different corner of this imagined world. In “Neo Surf,” shot in a sun-bleached, futuristic Athens, we see teenagers surfing on waves choked with trash and engaging in high-speed rituals with modified vehicles. It is a vision of a world where ecological collapse has already occurred, and the youth have simply adapted, finding adrenaline and joy in the ruins of the old world.

“Agra” moves the action to India, where the imagery becomes even more surreal. Gavras has always been obsessed with the “monumental,” and here he uses the staggering scale of the Indian landscape to showcase a society that feels both ancient and hyper-technological. The 180 Studios installation utilized massive LED screens and a bespoke sound system that made the bass feel like it’s vibrating in your marrow. It is a physical assault on the senses that demands total attention, a far cry from the distracted experience of watching a compressed YouTube clip on a smartphone.

The exhibition also included re-edits of Gavras’ earlier work, providing a clear lineage for his current obsessions. You can see the DNA of the rioting youths from the Justice “Stress” video evolving into the organized, ritualistic movements of the Leeds schoolboys. There is a consistent thread of “the beautiful violence” throughout his filmography—the idea that there is a profound, almost religious ecstasy to be found in moments of chaos. This theme reached its peak in his 2022 film Athena, which featured a breathtaking, continuous-shot opening sequence of a police station siege that left audiences physically breathless.

Fans visiting the London installation flooded Instagram with their reactions, describing the experience as “overwhelming” and “like being trapped inside a dream you can’t wake up from.” One visitor noted that the sound design is so surgically precise that you can hear the rustle of the tracksuits over the thud of the beat. This level of granular detail is what separates Gavras from the pack of directors who simply aim for a “dystopian aesthetic.” He isn’t just trying to look cool; he’s building a cohesive mythology for the end times.

The cultural footprint of “Storm” is already expanding beyond the gallery walls. This specific shade of red, the utilitarian cuts, and the brutalist backdrops are already surfacing in mood boards for upcoming fashion seasons. It is the “Gavras effect”: his visuals are so potent they inevitably become shorthand for “the future” in the minds of designers and creative directors worldwide. What makes Visions of 2034 particularly striking is its rejection of CGI. Gavras’ preference for practical effects and real-world locations gives the project a grit and a weight that digital environments simply lack. When you see 400 kids running, you know they were actually there, on that playground, in the biting cold. That reality translates into a visceral reaction—a sense of unease that no amount of green-screen can replicate.

Following its residency at 180 Studios, the conversation around Gavras’ work shifted. He is no longer just the guy who makes controversial music videos; he is an architect of the cultural imagination. In a world where our actual future often feels fragmented and terrifying, Visions of 2034 offered a vision that was strangely unified. It suggests that even in the grayest, most industrial corners of our future, there will still be rhythm, there will still be ritual, and there will still be the terrifying power of the crowd to demand we look at what we’ve become. The project invited audiences to step into 2034 eight years early during its run at 180 The Strand. If the viral trajectory of “Storm” was any indication, the world was more than ready to watch the beautiful chaos unfold.