Antonio Padovan

In 2007, at the age of twenty,[5][7][9] Padovan arrived in Manhattan, and the city of New York, which had once been a distant, ill-defined place now became real to him, and his home.[7] The internship led to a paid employment contract:[8] "Originally I wanted to try to work here for a couple of months, but my studio ended up hiring and sponsoring me."[4] Padovan mainly worked on interior design and restorations, in Diesel stores as well as their headquarters on West 19th Street, and Domenico Dolce's penthouse in Chelsea[4] (acquired by the fashion designer in 2009 for $29 million).[10]

After a couple of years, finding himself working twelve-hour days and often weekends,[7][4] "which is pretty normal for an architect,"[4] Padovan realized the career was not for him: "I've always loved films, I own myself probably 2000 DVDs, but back in Italy I never thought I could have been part of it."[4] One night, after seeing a Woody Allen film at the cinema, he was inspired and the next morning enrolled in an eight-week course in film directing[7] at the New York Film Academy instead of going to work.[4] Despite this, the firm continued to give him projects, and he began to divide his time between architecture and wandering Manhattan with a camera on his shoulder; at the end of the program, after completing his first short film, he received a full scholarship to come back for another year.[6][7][8][4] Padovan's first short film, which he wrote as well as directed, was Socks and Cakes, a slice of life film that impressed not only his professors, but also the judges at the 2010 Las Vegas film festival, where it won a Golden Ace Award.[4] His next short film was his student thesis, Perry St., a romantic comedy about a therapist and patient who struggle with the issues within their separate love lives, starring Catherine Mary Stewart.[11] Also released in 2010, it was accepted at sixteen film festivals and well received, winning four awards and an honorable mention.[4][11] Not long after, he made another short film shot in Taiwan, Tomorrow.[12]

By July 2011, Padovan released his fourth film, Mia,[13] "a romantic comedy" set in the West Village (a "favorite locale"), and which played at major film festivals,[14] and was halfway through shooting his fifth film, Tillman,[4] a project where for the first time he was his own cinematographer.[11] He was now involved in several other projects simultaneously and in diverse capacities, here a production assistant (AmeriQua),[11][12] there co-writing a horror short,[12] writing a feature film, as well as a project based in China.[4] His Christmas film, Puh-Rump-A-Pum-Pum[15] was also released in 2011. It has been remarked that most of these early films focus "on common people and ordinary problems."[16]

Along with his early artistic achievements, Padovan's professional directing career began in earnest with a company called JAJ,[14] directing videos and commercials,[6][2][7] his time divided between the US, Europe and Asia, working for companies from all around the world, including eStock Photo, Barilla and Hyundai.[6][2] Some of his commercials ran during the 2012 FIFA World Cup.[14] He was commissioned by Asatsu-DK, the largest communication company in Japan, to direct a video intended to restore Japan's international image in the wake of the Fukushima disaster; the result was Japan, Beyond (2012),[17] for which Padovan won the Stand for Japan Award and was invited to Tokyo.[6][2]

In May 2012, it was reported that Padovan had co-written a feature film, Getting Closer, with producer and playwright Libby Edmonds about two women in their forties, and the love relationship that develops between one of the women and her friend's 18-year-old son, an exploration of "a sincere, love relationship of an older woman and a younger man," and its effect upon the two best friends which interested Padovan because Hollywood routinely presents older men with younger female love interests and very rarely the other way round.[14] As of 2019, this project has not been realised and appears to have been abandoned.

In 2013, Padovan began to release films reflecting his exploration of other genres of filmmaking: he wrote and directed an hour-long documentary film, Once Upon a Time, Inc., about the eponymous non-profit performing arts center and theater in Richmond Hill, Queens,[18][19] where Padovan taught a class in filmmaking once per week,[14] and a breakthrough in the form of his first short horror movie, Jack Attack, which won more than thirty awards, and was selected by more than fifty festivals internationally, including Fantafestival, Milan, Sitges, Fantasia, Melbourne, Fantastic Fest, and the New York City Horror Film Festival.[6][2][20] In Los Angeles, the film was shown at the Mann's Chinese Theatre, and has since been released as part of two anthology films in the U.S.: Seven Hells (2014), and All Hallows' Eve 2 (2015).[6][2]

Padovan's next short films, released from 2014 through 2016, were M is for Misdirection,[21] selected as one of the twelve finalists for the ABCs of Death 2 competition, from 548 international entries,[2] and a pair of short animated films produced in Italy: The Mods,[22] which won the Giotto Special Prize at the Giffoni Film Festival,[6] the largest children's film festival in the world,[2] and The Little Sunflower that Fell in Love with the Moon, which he later adapted as a children's book published by Le Brumaie (2017) and launched at the International Book Fair in Turin, in 2017.[6] Eveless (2016) is a science-fiction horror film about two men living in a world without women who attempt to create one with only the limited resources they have gathered.[23][24] It was selected for inclusion in the 2017 Canadian science-fiction horror anthology film Galaxy of Horrors,[6] which comprises eight short films within a larger narrative frame in which a man awakens from a cryogenic sleep pod and is forced to watch the shorts as entertainment while his damaged life-support runs out.[24]

During this period, in 2015, Padovan co-founded the Greenwich Village Film Festival, which selects short films and documentaries from around the world,[7] with fellow filmmaker Alessia Gatti, with a view to celebrating the neighborhood where they both live,[7][25] and where most of Padovan's films have been made (specifically, in the West Village).[16] Alessia Gatti describes the origins and quick expansion of the event in 2016:

It started out as just an idea I had with a friend, Antonio Padovan, and then luck had it our way when on the night of our first edition we met two producers, Richard Eric Weigle and Michael Anastasio, both of which have been residents of the village for forty-three years. They were enthused with our idea and decided to join us for this year's event. Thanks to their support we're now able to hold the event for three nights at our 2016 edition.[26]

The festival has continued to grow, and in 2018, was held in the IFC Center.[7]

In 2016, Padovan was reportedly in post-production for his first feature film, set to be released in the fall of 2017,[6][2] a murder mystery comedy film taking place among the vineyards of Prosecco, in the hills outside Venice.[2] Based on the 2010 novel Finché c'è Prosecco c'è Speranza by Fulvio Ervas,[6] it would promote the image of the Veneto region.[8] In a 2018 interview, when asked why he returned to Italy to make his first feature, Padovan said that while on a ten-day vacation in Italy, his sister suggested he read a novel set in his (and the author's) native Veneto region;[27] it impressed him for its story, but it was also out of nostalgia that he decided that his first feature film should be shot "in his own house" (l'avrei girato "a casa mia"), the Veneto region having been relatively unexplored by Italian cinema up to now.[7] Padovan collaborated with Ervas to write the screenplay for The Last Prosecco, which stars Giuseppe Battiston.

In the 2018 interview, Padovan said he was working on a second Italian feature based on an original idea co-written with Marco Pettenello, scheduled for release in 2019.[7] A casting call was issued in the Polesine area by Padovan in March 2019.[28] The title was revealed to be Il grande passo during the casting call in Rovigo.[29] In April, a second casting call was made for the project, with filming to take place in Rosolina.[30] Cast members included Giuseppe Battiston, Stefano Fresi, and Camilla Filippi, while crew included Gaspare De Pascali (screenplay) and Duccio Cimatti (cinematography).[31] Additional filming locations included Canaro, Crespino, and Villanova Marchesana, with shooting beginning on 9 April and was to have concluded on 18 May, with Battiston and Fresi, who had never appeared on screen together before, playing two brothers, Mario and Dario.[32] As it transpired, the plot involves igniting a rocket ship, but something went wrong on 1 May and the prop was completely destroyed, thereby postponing the shoot.[33] Despite the delay, the film was released as scheduled, winning awards for the two leads at the 37th Turin Film Festival in late November 2019.[34][35]