Pikoo is a 1980 Bengali short film directed by Satyajit Ray for a French television channel, France 3. The film is based on a short story named Pikoor Diary (Pikoo’s Diary), written by Ray for one of his books, Pikoor Diary O Onyanyo (Pikoo’s Diary and Other Stories). The film showcases a day in the life of a six-year-old child, Pikoo, in the backdrop of his mother’s extramarital affair.

Satyajit Ray was approached by the freelance producer Henri Fraise to make a film. Ray said in his biography that, when Henri Fraise approached him to make a film, he briefed Ray by saying “[…] you can place your camera at your window and shoot the house next-door—we will accept that.” In an interview in Cineaste, Ray stated that “Pikoo is a very complex film. It is a poetic statement which cannot be reduced to concrete terms. One statement the film tries to make is that, if a woman is to be unfaithful, if she is to have an extramarital affair, she can’t afford to have soft emotions towards her children, or, in this case, her son. The two just don’t go together. You have to be ruthless. Maybe she’s not ruthless to that extent. She’s being very Bengali. A European in the same circumstances would not behave in the same way.”

Also See: Our Ray, Their Ray: The Bipolarity of Seeing an Auteur, The Cinema of Satyajit Ray

The film’s script was included in the book, Original English Film Scripts Satyajit Ray, put together by Ray’s son Sandip Ray and Aditinath Sarkar, an ex-CEO of Ray Society. The book also includes original scripts from Ray’s other films.

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