[2] He also worked on screenplays for René Clément (The Joy of Living, 1961) and Alessandro Blasetti (Europa di notte, 1959) before undertaking his own career as a director.

"[2] During the filming of Africa Addio—which includes footage of intense fighting and mass death in the Mau Mau Uprising, the Zanzibar Revolution, the Simba rebellion, and other post-colonial African conflicts—the crew was interrogated in Zaire, and arrested and nearly executed in Tanzania, before an army official intervened on their behalf, shouting "Stop – they're not whites, they're Italians.

[2] Following the critical and commercial failure of the faux-documentary Goodbye Uncle Tom (which reviewer Roger Ebert called "...the most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency ever to masquerade as a documentary"),[6] Jacopetti and Prosperi attempted a fictional film, 1975's Mondo candido (a modern version of Candide by French philosopher Voltaire).

Italian press articles had reported that he wished to be buried next to his girlfriend, the British actress Belinda Lee, who died in 1961 in a car accident in which Jacopetti was also hurt.

The New York Times reviewer Pauline Kael dismissed Mondo Cane, claiming that its advocates were "too restless and apathetic to pay attention to motivations and complications, cause and effect".

[1] Criticism became even more pronounced with Africa Addio, which Roger Ebert called "brutal, dishonest, and racist" and claims that it "slanders a continent".

[1] In the 2003 documentary The Godfathers of Mondo, Prosperi went on to claim criticism of their work was due to the fact that "The public was not ready for this kind of truth."