Jonas Carpignano

Rome, Italy. His mother, Diane Benskin Carpignano, is from a family originally from Barbados in the Caribbean. He grew up in New York but spent extensive periods of time in Rome, Italy where his father's family resided. At an early age he was surrounded by filmmakers and musicians. 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. His uncle, Luciano Emmer, was an Italian film director. On his mother's side, his uncle Sammy Benskin was a well known jazz pianist and band leader. He was educated at the Fieldston School in Riverdale.^[4] He began making films at Wesleyan University, where he graduated with honors in 2006 and, after having worked in the film industry in Italy and in the United States for a few years, he enrolled in the New York University Tisch School of Arts Graduate Film Program where he made his first short films. His work as a director has been shown at the Cannes Film Festival,^[5] Venice Film Festival and the New York Film Festival

International Critics' Week. The film was nominated for three Independent Sprit Awards and it earned Carpignano the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award at the IFP Gotham Awards. 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.^[7]