Mondo film

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Mondo film is a subgenre of exploitive documentary films. Many mondo films are made in a way to resemble a pseudo-documentary and usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, or situations. Common traits of mondo films include portrayals of foreign cultures (which have drawn accusations of ethnocentrism or racism),^[1] an emphasis on taboo subjects such as death and sex, and staged sequences presented as genuine documentary footage. Over time, the films have placed increasing emphasis on footage of the dead and dying (both real and fake).^[2]

The term mondo is derived from the Italian word for 'world'. The term shockumentary is also used to describe the genre.

Mondo films began to soar in popularity in the 1960s with the releases of Mondo Cane (1962), Women of the World (1963) and Africa Addio (1966). The genre arguably reached its peak with Faces of Death (1978), a film that inspired a myriad of imitators, such as Banned from Television, Death Scenes, and the Traces of Death and Faces of Gore series.