Sep 5, 2023

2024 Academy Award Nominee for Best Short Film: "Our Uniform," directed by Yegane Moghaddam

Welcome to Cartoon Brew's spotlight series highlighting animated short films that have qualified for the 2024 Academy Awards. There are several ways for a film to qualify for an award. In this edition, we will focus on films that have won an Oscar-eligible award at a festival that is eligible for the Academy Awards.

Today's short film is "Our Uniform" by Iranian director Yegane Moghaddam. Moghaddam produced this film independently and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Animayo Film Festival in Spain.

In the film, an Iranian girl recalls her school days, literally through the wrinkles and fabrics of her old uniform. Moghaddam painted directly on the fabric used for school uniforms, rather than on paper, canvas, or digital media, telling the story of someone who dreams of a better future.

Cartoon Brew: The most striking aesthetic choice in the film is the use of cloth for the background. What challenges arose during the production? Yes, the cloth serves as the main backdrop of the film, on which everything is projected. That way, the image and the topic of the film would work hand in hand with each other. But there is not much that can be done with a flat, non-foldable cloth. So there is not much camerawork in the film. Most scenes are shot from neutral eye angles and there is very little camera movement. A certain stiffness and stillness can be felt throughout the film, which I personally dislike in a director, but I suppose it enhances the underlying theme and atmosphere of the film.

What was it about this story and concept that attracted you to direct this film? It's like growing up in uniform. I always wanted to make a film about this "ever-present" garment. This uniform is not just a garment. It is a text to be deciphered. A manifesto against women. Animation is a very important part of the film because it allows us to read "our uniform" as a text and to translate it into a series of images.

What did you learn about the production aspect, the filmmaking aspect, the creative aspect, or the subject matter through the experience of making this film? Basically, it was a fun, amateurish experience that allowed me to explore the possibilities in the realm of animation and experiment with different techniques. I still consider it an amateur experience. There was no set timeline, no precise storyboard. Just a series of lines and ideas in my head and a piece of cloth in front of me. On the filmmaking side, I learned how to improvise. On the creative side, I realized that too much material can ruin a piece (at least for me). So I limited myself to a few assets.

How did you develop your visual approach to this film and why did you settle on this style/method? In recent years, I work more as an illustrator than an animator. I combined colored pencil drawings with object animation. The process of making this film was very simple. The stop-motion scenes were very short, and there were no puppets or props to move. I then combined the 2D animation layer with the stop-motion layer. The layers blended perfectly with each other, maintaining both the texture of the fabric and the detail of the childlike drawings and pencil strokes.