Our Uniform is a 2023 animated short film (7 minutes) from Iran, directed by Yegane Moghaddam.
It is an autobiographical story of Moghaddam's childhood and specifically her experience in the Iranian school system. All girls in Iranian schools are forced to wear a hijab, even though the classes they attend are all female. Yegane chafes under the strict rules and occasionally rebels by letting some of her hair slip out. Girls in Iran can only relax and have fun when they are out of school, at home, in private.
The animation is unique in that all the drawing is done on articles of clothing, such as the materials that go into a school uniform.
Tropes:
- Book Ends: The film opens with drawings of people on clothing, as the narrator reflects that people are like clothing, with their own colors and textures. The same message is repeated again at the end.
- Church Police: Morality police stalk the school, correcting any discrepancies in girls' uniforms. One scene shows just such an enforcer pulling down the back of a girl's hijab, to cover her ponytail, then realizing that doing so uncovered her bangs, requiring the enforcer to pull down the front of the hijab...which uncovers the ponytail again...
- Line Boil: Done deliberately with the opening disclaimer, a written text clarifying that the film is not meant to stigmatize the hijab or women that choose to wear them.
- Medium Blending: Most of the animation is pictures drawn on clothing, but sometimes the clothing itself is animated in Stop Motion.
- Narrator: Moghaddam provides narration, sharing memories of her life growing up in Iran's severely strict school system.
- One-Gender School: Yegane can't understand why girls in school are required to wear a hijab in class when it is an all-girl school.
- Stop Motion: The clothing is sometimes animated in stop motion. One scene talks about how the uniforms are modified as a girl gets older. A line of young girls is shown drawn on a leg of a pair of pants. The narrator talks about older girls—and the pants are bunched up, representing a line of breasts across the more senior girls. The girls look down and giggle.
- Title Drop: When talking about her school, Yegane shows a child in a uniform with a hijab and says "this is our uniform."
