An independent filmmaker has filed a lawsuit against Beyoncé, after claiming that the singer “copied” his ideas for her recent Lemonade trailer.

Matthew Fulks, who works as a creative director at Kentucky news station WDRB, says the star’s album teaser directly stole nine visual segments from his 2014 short film, Palinoia. According to his official complaint – which was filed yesterday (June 8) – Fulks claims that Sony and Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment team were all given access to the film in July last year, after he was approached by the label’s Columbia strand to direct a video for the band MS MR. 

“The number of aesthetic decisions included in Plaintiff’s Palinoia Work that are parroted in Defendants’ Lemonade Trailer demonstrates that the Lemonade Trailer is substantially similar to the Palinoia Work,” the complaint says. “The misappropriated content includes both the particular elements that the Plaintiff chose to comprise the Palinoia Work and the coordination and arrangement of those particular elements.”

The official complaint – which can be read in full here – goes on to list a number of visual and sonic similarities between the shorts. This includes a “graffiti and persons with heads down” moment, a “grass scene”, some stairs, “red persons with eyes obscured”, and some “side-lit ominous figures”. See below for some of the evidence Fulks puts forward:

It’s not the first time that comparisons have been drawn from Lemonade, either. Filmmaker and artist Nelson Carvajal made a visual essay on the topic earlier this year, highlighting all the cult references adopted by the singer throughout the film – which, according to him, includes nods to the Afrofuturist work of Terence Nance and the surrealism of David Lynch.

For Fulks though, these apparent nods are no compliment. According to the lawsuit, he is demanding all “profits attributed to exploitations” of his work. This would include an undisclosed percentage of sales of the Lemonade album.

Think he might have a point? Watch Palinoia in full here and Beyoncé’s Lemonade trailer here to draw your own conclusions.