People said Naples was ‘dangerous.’ So this British film director leaned on her working-class roots to show a different side of the city

When Trudie Styler was growing up in 1960s working-class England, her family expected her to become a typist at a paintbrush factory.

But life turned out rather more grandly: Going to a good high school meant Styler “started to dream much bigger,” she told CNBC by video call. She trained as an actress, joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and met — and then married — Gordon Sumner, better known as rock star Sting. The couple have homes in New York, the U.K. and Italy.

Now a movie producer and director, Styler says it was her “quite tough” childhood that helped give her the confidence to direct her latest film, a documentary named “Posso Entrare? An Ode To Naples,” (streaming in the U.K. on Disney+ and in the U.S. on Hulu). The film saw Styler wandering through the small, lava-paved streets of the Italian city, knocking on doors and asking: “Can I come in?” interviewing people about their daily lives, as well as residents affected by the city’s notorious mafia, known as the Camorra.

Growing up in a terraced house in the the village of Stoke Prior in the English county of Worcestershire meant that as children, “We were in and out of each other’s homes,” Styler told CNBC. Her mother was a dinner lady and her father a factory worker, and one day, wondering when her dinner would be ready, Styler sought her mother and found her in a neighbor’s home helping to deliver a baby. “I sort of timorously said, ‘I’m hungry,’ and … my mother said: ‘Get out!'” she recalled.

And when Styler told her parents she wanted to act, it didn’t go down very well. “That began a very big fight with my dad, Harry,” Styler said. “I don’t think he understood that … going to grammar school and learning languages and learning sciences, you know that your horizons, of course, broadened,” she said.

“That sort of, confidence that I had when I got to Naples just emerged,” she said.

Styler has long had a relationship with Italy, having acted in three films in the country in the 1980s and giving birth to her third child, Eliot, in Pisa in 1990. Later that decade, she and Sting bought an estate in Tuscany, and Styler would often go to the Ischia Film Festival in the bay of Naples.

But when Styler’s producer asked if she’d like to direct a documentary about the city, she realized she didn’t know much about it. “Do you know Naples?” she would ask friends, with some repeating “hearsay” about it being dangerous. But she decided to go with a “blank canvas,” she told CNBC.

“I’m going to take away this feeling that has been bestowed upon me, of be afraid, be very afraid of Napoli, and investigate it myself … really trying to find from the locals what they thought of their own city,” Styler said of her approach.

“People would pour out their personal stories,” she said of her door-knocking. Among the characters in the film are glove maker Michelle and the eight-year-old grandson she has looked after since his mother died, and Nora, a swimmer in her 90s who remembers Hitler’s 1938 tour of Naples with Mussolini.—

“It’s just so fascinating to go to a place with some preconceived ideas and just [be] divested of all that, and to allow yourself the magical and rich experience of discovering a city and its people,” Styler said.

In an organized interview, Styler also met Roberto Saviano, author of the book “Gomorrah,” which tells the story of the Camorra’s “monstrous” activities in Naples. He has been in hiding and under police escort since its publication in 2006. “I thought they could turn lawyers against me, which they did,” he says of the Comorra’s response to his book. “But I didn’t think I would have triggered a military, physical rage,” he tells Styler in the film.

One of the most striking groups Styler interviews is campaigning organization Forti Guerriere, which was set up by several women after their friend Fortuna was killed by her husband in the city. They successfully campaigned for his sentence to be increased from 10 years to 30 years. “Women are really now, taking a very big stance against femicide and violence in the household. It’s very heartening to see that,” Styler told CNBC.

Meanwhile, former mayoral candidate Alessandra Clemente talks to Styler about her mother’s accidental killing by the Camorra in Naples and her efforts to help young men in the town seek a non-violent life, and the film also introduces Antonio Loffredo, a priest who opens his church to local groups.

Through her production company Maven Pictures, which she founded with producer Celine Rattray, Styler seeks to “push the dial” for women in the film industry, and the firm has made 28 films since its founding nearly two decades ago. “When we set up Maven, we said, OK, we’re going to give actresses more opportunity to bring us their projects, to be our co-producers, if we like the script enough and feel that we can do it,” Styler said.

Styler’s advice to women earlier in their production careers is to “look for stories that have a strong female narrative, so that you can create employment for women,” but she lamented that most screenwriters are men — who “often” write men into leading roles.

Some production roles are still male-dominated, such as cinematographers or directors of photography, Styler said. “For many, many years that it’s been sort of like, oh, well, women couldn’t possibly be cinematographers lugging around that camera. I mean … it’s quite upsetting when you hear language like that,” she said.

But streaming services are hiring women “much more” than they have in the past, Styler said. And the movie industry has “got better for actresses,” she said. “Now they’re not, sort of like sent out to pasture at 40, as they used to be. It’s good to see that women’s careers have lengthened quite a bit, but there’s a long way to go,” Styler said.