Asif Kapadia has built a Oscar-winning career creating his own distinct documentary style portraying ambitious and tragic figures like the late singer Amy Winehouse, the late Formula One race car driver Ayrton Senna and the Argentinian soccer great Diego Maradona .

And Kapadia, while appearing at the MIA Market in Rome on Thursday, took care to plot that career in three drama acts. His creative journey’s set-up was as a young man and the youngest of five children discovering his passion. “Working on a student film changed my life,” he recalled of a lightbulb moment that launched him as an aspiring filmmaker.

The middle part had Kapadia confronting the possibility of sustaining a career.…