[7] He was a teenager on September 11, 2001, which left a very deep impression on him, ultimately precipitating his move to New York City, though he was not conscious of the connection at the time.

[8] Padovan moved to New York without any real plan, driven only by a desire to live there, which years later he realized was connected to the impression made on him in his youth.

[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.

[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] 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.

[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.

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] 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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[34][35] Antonio Padovan does not like what he calls a "self-absorbed directorial style, where the use of albeit visually striking images" clouds the story, citing as examples Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, and films by Tim Burton and the Coen Brothers.