Trudie Styler participates in the UK premiere of “Posso Entrare? He went to Naples” in London on January 21, 2025.
Dave Benett | Getty pictures | Disney+
When Trudie Styler grew up in the 1960s England’s working class, her family expected that she would become a type at a brush factory.
But life proved to be quite bigger: going to good high school meant Styler “started dreaming much bigger,” she told the CNBC video call. She trained as an actress, joined by Royal Shakespeare Company and met – and then married – Gordon Sumner, better known as rock star Sting. The couple have homes in New York, the UK and Italy.
Now the film producer and director, Styler says that this is a “pretty difficult” childhood to help her give her confidence to direct her latest film, a documentary called “Poso Entrare? Go to Naples”, (current in the UK at Disney+ IU USA on Hulu). The movie saw Styler wandering the small streets of an Italian lava -shaped city, knocking on the door and asking, “Can I come in?” Interviewing people about their daily lives, as well as residents affected by the city infamous mafia, known as Kamorra.
Growing up in a terraced house in the village of Stoke before in England County Worcestershire meant that as children, “we were in homes and left the homes,” Styler told CNBC. Her mother was a lady for dinner, and her father a factory worker, and one day, wondering when her dinner will be ready, Styler sought her mother and found her in a neighbor’s house that helps to provide her baby. “Somehow I said to Timorovo,” I’m hungry, “and … my mother said,” Go out! “She recalled.
And when Styler told his parents that they wanted to act, it didn’t miss it well. “That started a very big fight with my father Harry,” Styler said. “I don’t think he realized that … go to high school and teaching language and learning sciences, you know that your horizons, of course, have expanded,” she said.
“Such a kind, the confidence I had when I just appeared in Naples,” she said.
Going to Naples with a ’empty canvas’
Styler had a long relationship with Italy, starred in three films in the country in the 1980s and gave birth to his third child Eliot, in Pisa in 1990. Later, the decade, she and Stiring bought the property in Tuscany, and Styler would often go to the Ischia Film Festival in the Ischia Bay of Naples.
Trudie Styler and her husband Stiring attend the Global Ischia Festival on July 8, 2024 in Italy, Italy.
Daniele Venturelli | Getty Images
But when Styler’s producer asked if she wanted to focus a documentary about the city, she realized she didn’t know much about it. “Do you know Naples?” She would ask her friends, with some repetitive “senses” that this was dangerous. But she decided to go with “empty canvas,” she told CNBC.
“I’ll take away that feeling that is assigned to me, fear, you are very afraid of Napoli and explore it alone … really trying to find from the locals what they thought of their city,” Styler said of her approach.
“People would pour out their personal stories,” she said about her door beating. Among the characters in the film are Michelle glove manufacturer and an eight-year-old granddaughter, who has been cared for since his mother died, and Nora, a swimmer in the 90s who remembers Hitler’s tour of Naples from Mussolini of 1938.
“It’s just so fascinating to go to a place with some pre -conceived ideas and just [be] Elected from all this, and that you allow yourself the magical and rich experience of discovering the city and its people, “Styler said.
Roberto Saviano, author of the book “Gomorah,” hides after his book exhibited the activities of the Naples mafia, known as Camorra.
Franco Origlia | Getty Images
In an organized interview, Styler also met Roberto Saviano, the author of the book “Gorahh”, who tells the story of Camorrina “monstrous“Activities in Naples. He was Hiding also under police escort since its publication in 2006. “I thought the lawyers could turn against me, which they did,” he says about the answer to his book. “But I didn’t think I would start military, physical anger,” Styler says in the movie.
Women in the movie
One of the most striking interviews of Styler is the Forti Guerriere campaign campaign, set by several women after their friend Fortuna killed her husband in the city. The campaigns for his sentence successfully increased from 10 years to 30 years. “Women are really now, they take a very big position against femicide and household violence. It’s very listening to see that,” Styler told CNBC.
Meanwhile, former mayor of Alessandra Clemente talks to Styler about the random murder of her mother by Camorre in Naples and her efforts to help the young men in the city seek an non -violent life, and the film also introduces Antoni Loffred, a priest who opens her church to local groups.
Styler knocked on the door of people in the narrow streets of Naples, asking “Posso entry?” or “Can I get in?”
© Marco Bottigelli | Moment | Getty Images
Through her production company Maven Pictures, which she founded with the producer of Celine Rattray, Styler seeks to “push the dial” for women in the film industry, and the company has made 28 films since its founding almost two decades ago. “When we set up Maven, we said, okay, we will give actresses more opportunities to bring us our projects, to be our co -producers, if we like the script and feel we can do it,” Styler said.
Styler’s advice to women earlier in their production career is “looking for stories that have a strong female narrative, so you can create employment for women,” but she regretted that most screenwriters are men – who “often” write men in leading roles.
Some production roles still dominate men, such as a cinema or a photograph director, Styler said. “Many, many years, it’s kind of like, Oh, well, women couldn’t be cinema who pull around that camera. I mean … It’s pretty disturbing when you hear that language,” she said.
But streaming services are employed by women “much more” than in the past, Styler said. And the film industry “has become better for actresses,” she said. “Now they are not, like a pasture at 40, as they used to be. It’s good to see that a woman’s career has been quite extended, but there is a long way to go,” Styler said.
