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The classic fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast has had its fair share of adaptations over the years, including the popular ones by Disney. But one factor common to all of them was that the Beast somehow always transformed from being a hairy, brown character to a handsome white blonde man.

Now we have a short film that questions this whitewashing of the beast (and, by extension, many other Disney movies) by casting a person of colour as the Prince Charming that the Beast turns into. Directed by Indian actor-director Dhruv Uday Singh, Beauty and the East also satirises gender stereotypes and other fairy tale clichés.

The fairy tale was originally written in French as La Belle et la Bête by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, and published in 1740.