Yegane Moghaddam: The fabric of memory

Yegane Moghaddam’s 2024 Oscar-nominated short Our Uniform used textiles, clothing and mixed-media animation to explore the restrictions of wearing a hijab as a school uniform in Iran. 

Here, the Smith & Foulkes-nominated Innovator speaks to Jamie Madge about discussing ideologies through her own garments, and how tactile animation remains a place for discovery.

How did you first get into animation, and when did you begin to feel it was the right language for the stories you wanted to tell?

Animation is a language that translates ideas and emotions into visual form. I first became interested in it while working on a game project and designing its world.

After screenings, many people told me they connected not necessarily to my exact experience, but to the idea of how institutions like school quietly shape the way we see the world.

At some point, I realised that a game is essentially an interactive animation, where storytelling, movement and design come together to create an experience. That realisation drew me to animation and made me see it as the perfect language for expressing the kinds of stories and ideas I want to explore.

Our Uniform is rooted in personal experience, but it has travelled widely with international audiences. When did you realise it had such broad appeal?

I was genuinely surprised that such a specific memory could resonate so widely. After screenings, many people told me they connected not necessarily to my exact experience, but to the idea of how institutions like school quietly shape the way we see the world, often in ways we only recognise much later.

It reminded me that our most personal memories can also be our most universal, because despite our different backgrounds, we share many of the same human experiences.

Above: The trailer for Yegane Moghaddam’s Oscar-nominated short, Our Uniform, which uses clothing and textiles to explore identity, ideology and the restrictions of school life in Iran.

The film uses clothing not just as subject matter, but as the surface on which the story unfolds. What first made you think of fabric as a storytelling space?

The idea came from a simple observation. I was looking at a piece of fabric in the sunlight, and the folds and wrinkles suddenly felt like a vast landscape. I immediately felt that image belonged in the film. It was a microcosm of a world shaped by ideology.

From there, the visual language grew organically: stitches, buttons, tape measures and other elements emerged one by one, as if the story itself was being woven out of the fabric and its accessories.

You’ve spoken about using your own clothes in Our Uniform. Did working with such personal materials change your emotional relationship with the film?

Definitely. When you use what you have, rather than what you wish you had, you learn to trust and cherish what is already yours. Those old jeans and trousers had lived with me for years, carrying traces of memory and experience that no newly purchased fabric could replicate.

I was looking at a piece of fabric in the sunlight, and the folds and wrinkles suddenly felt like a vast landscape.

In a way, they felt as if they had been waiting in my drawer for their role in the film. No matter how expensive another piece of clothing might have been, it couldn’t have played the part as truthfully as my own clothes did.

The animation feels intimate, handmade and conceptually precise. How did you find the right balance between visual invention and emotional restraint?

I think if you tell a story honestly, the right balance tends to emerge on its own. I never tried to exaggerate the emotions or distort the truth to make it more dramatic. At the same time, I wasn’t chasing a perfect or flawless aesthetic.

Instead, I trusted my simple illustration style and allowed the visual language to serve the story. The emotional restraint came from staying truthful to the experience, and the visual invention grew naturally from that honesty.

Above: Yegane Moghaddam attending the 96th Oscar Week Events.

Much of Our Uniform is about the tension between individuality and imposed identity. How did you avoid making that idea feel too literal or didactic?

Yes, I try to avoid didactic storytelling. One thing that can make a film feel overly instructional is taking a very serious tone. I wanted Our Uniform to have humour and a sense of playfulness, so I approached it as a satire. Ideally, it makes you smile first, and then, beneath that smile, you begin to read between the lines.

The film has a strong sense of transformation: clothes become landscapes, bodies, memories and symbols. Do you usually begin with a visual metaphor, or does that emerge through the making?

A lot of it is improvised and spontaneous. I love visual metaphors and try to use them as much as I can. Usually, one metaphor gives birth to ten others. It’s a bit like writing poetry: the first verse is the hardest to find, but once it’s there, the rest tends to flow more naturally.

The visual language of the film emerged through that process of discovery, with each image leading to the next.

What keeps drawing you to themes of body, clothing, gesture and society?

I think I’m drawn to these themes because I’m fascinated by the different kinds of confinement we live inside. Not just one prison, but prisons within prisons. Our Uniform was about the prison of ideology and how it shapes the way we see the world. My upcoming short, Our Body Language, is, in a sense, about the prison of the body and how it often controls us more than we control it.

I love visual metaphors and try to use them as much as I can.

The film after that explores what may be the ultimate prison: the mind itself. We like to think we have complete agency, but I’m interested in questioning that assumption and exploring how much of our lives is shaped by forces we barely notice.

Our Body Language will explore gesture, movement, conformity and social behaviour. Does it feel like a continuation of the ideas in Our Uniform, or a move into new territory?

It’s new in many different ways. This film has no narration, so the gestures themselves are meant to carry and narrate the story. It also came out of an experiment, almost accidentally, when I started exploring the relationship between 2D animation and 3D animation.

That process opened up a new visual language for me. At the same time, the story itself feels more direct and engaging, even though the approach is more experimental.

There’s often an assumption that younger animators are driven mainly by digital tools, but your work feels very tactile and material-led. What draws you to physical materials and handmade processes?

I’m a very tactile person, and find it difficult to sit behind a screen for hours at a time. Working with physical materials keeps me engaged and present in the process.

I like the mixed approach of moving objects, shooting frame by frame, and then animating on top of that. It keeps me active and makes the process feel more alive. It also helps me stay close to the material, which is important for the kind of work I want to make.