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Pioneer Italian documentary director Cecilia Mangini, whose political works exploring hot-button topics such as youth contending with Italy’s postwar poverty, the condition of women, and the roots of fascism made her a legendary figure on the international film festival circuit, died on Jan. 21. She was 93.

Mangini made her mark from her very first work, 1958 feature “Ignoti alla città” (Unknown to the City), about kids in Rome’s slums, which was written by gay, leftist poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, with whom Mangini subsequently collaborated on other docs.

“Unknown to the City,” which drew from Pasolini’s first novel “Ragazzi di Vita” (“The Street Kids”), was initially blocked by Italy’s censors who objected to a scene in which young boys steal from a newspaper seller because they claimed it could lead to similar delinquency. Mangini appealed the censors’ decision and won.

“All this buzz, Pasolini, the delinquency charge,...