Welcome to an in-depth look at Our Uniform, an outstanding animated short film directed and self-produced by Iranian filmmaker Yegane Moghaddam. This film has garnered significant attention, notably qualifying for the 2024 Oscars after receiving the grand jury prize at Spain’s prestigious Animayo festival. This recognition places Our Uniform among a select group of films distinguished for their storytelling and artistic innovation in the competitive world of animated shorts.
Moghaddam’s Our Uniform offers a deeply personal and culturally resonant narrative. The film intricately weaves together childhood memories of an Iranian schoolgirl, using the very fabric of her old school uniform as a canvas for recollection. This is not animation on paper or a digital screen; Moghaddam’s distinctive approach involves painting directly onto the cloth used to create school uniforms. Through this tactile and symbolic medium, she unfolds a story of a young girl’s dreams and aspirations for a brighter future.
To understand more about the creative process and unique choices behind Our Uniform, Cartoon Brew engaged in an insightful interview with Yegane Moghaddam.
Cartoon Brew: The most striking aesthetic choice you made in this film is using fabric for your backgrounds. What kinds of challenges did that create during production?
Yegane Moghaddam
Yegane Moghaddam: Indeed, the fabric serves as the foundational background in Our Uniform, a deliberate choice to ensure the visual presentation and thematic concerns of the film are intrinsically linked. However, working with fabric as a primary medium presents unique constraints. Its inherent flatness and lack of flexibility significantly limit camera movement. This is why you’ll notice a predominantly static camera perspective throughout the film, mostly positioned at a neutral, eye-level angle with minimal camera shifts. While, as a director, I typically prefer more dynamic camera work, this inherent rigidity in the visual language of Our Uniform ironically enhances the film’s underlying themes and overall atmosphere, contributing to a sense of stillness and introspection that resonates with the subject matter.
What was it about this story or concept that connected with you and compelled you to direct the film?
Uniforms are more than just garments; they are integral components of our lived experiences, especially during formative years. We spend a significant portion of our lives within the confines of these uniforms. For me, the school uniform emerged as a powerful symbol – an “ever-present” piece of clothing that acts as both a backdrop and a canvas reflecting our daily lives and societal impositions. I’ve long held the desire to explore this concept cinematically. I view the uniform as a coded text, particularly in the context of societal expectations placed upon women. Animation, I realized, is an exceptionally potent medium to dissect this imposed clothing convention. It allowed me to interpret “our uniform” as a visual text, translating its implicit messages and cultural significance into a sequence of animated images, effectively deconstructing and reimagining its meaning through film.
What did you learn through the experience of making this film, either production-wise, filmmaking-wise, creatively, or about the subject matter?
Initially, Our Uniform was conceived as a low-stakes project, an opportunity to playfully explore the expansive possibilities of animation and experiment with various techniques in a relatively informal setting. I still consider it somewhat of an amateur endeavor in its spirit of exploration. The production process was intentionally flexible, lacking a rigid timeline or a meticulously detailed storyboard. Instead, I worked with a fluid collection of ideas and visual concepts, guided by the texture and presence of the fabric itself. Filmmaking-wise, this project taught me the invaluable skill of improvisation and adaptability. Creatively, I discovered the power of restraint; realizing that excessive resources or materials can sometimes dilute the purity and impact of the work—at least for my creative process. Consequently, I consciously limited my material palette, focusing on essential elements to maintain a focused and cohesive visual narrative.
Can you describe how you developed your visual approach to the film? Why did you settle on this style/technique?
My visual style is deeply rooted in my background as an illustrator. In recent years, my professional focus has leaned more towards illustration than animation, and Our Uniform is a direct reflection of this artistic trajectory. My aim was to fuse the textural richness of colored pencil drawings with the dynamic possibilities of object animation. The practical execution of the film was quite direct and process-driven. The stop-motion animation sequences are deliberately concise, avoiding complex puppet or prop manipulations. Subsequently, a layer of 2D animation was composited over the stop-motion footage. This layering technique proved remarkably effective, seamlessly blending the tactile quality of the fabric with the delicate details of the childlike drawings and pencil strokes. These two visual components—fabric texture and illustrative detail—were paramount in achieving the desired aesthetic for Our Uniform, creating a visually harmonious and thematically resonant final piece.
