He grew up in New York but spent extensive periods of time in Rome, Italy where his father's family resided.

His paternal grandfather Vittorio Carpignano was a filmmaker and producer of some of the most memorable commercials of early Italian television, and a prolific artist in the latter part of his life.

[6] In 2015, Carpignano made his feature debut with Mediterranea, which had its world premiere at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival's International Critics' Week.

The National Board of Review gave Carpignano the award for the best directorial debut of 2015 and put Mediterranea on its list of the top five foreign language films of the year.

[10] In 2021 Carpignano's third feature A Chiara had its world premiere in the Director's Fortnight at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and won the Europa Labels prize for Best European film marking the second time that the director earned this prize at Cannes.

In 2018 Carpignano won the award for best director (Miglior Regia) at the David di Donatello, the country's equivalent of the Oscars.