You’ve visited Italy on vacation, but have you been to Naples? The new Hulu documentary Posso Entrare? (Can I Come In?): An Ode to Naples wants to change that. It’s written and directed by Trudie Styler, who has an estate in Tuscany with her husband, rock star Sting. Surprisingly, she was unfamiliar with Naples until she made the film.
“We have quite a full life in Tuscany, but I’d never been to Naples,” she tells ABC Audio. “And then I started to ask questions. ‘Why haven’t you been to Naples?’ I would say to a friend. ‘Oh, well … [it’s] dirty, dangerous.'”
So when Styler was offered the chance to make a film about the city, she wanted to dispel those notions.
“For the last three years I’ve been immersing myself in that city, meeting extraordinary people who have their stories to tell, which I weave through into the documentary. And they transformed my life,” she tells ABC Audio.
Full of history, art and culture, Naples has been plagued by organized crime for years. Styler’s film highlights all of that, as well as unique programs that artists, locals and clergy have established to give young people a chance to thrive and help those hoping for a better life.
One program, the Orchestra of the Seas, teaches prisoners to make instruments from the wood of shipwrecked immigrant boats. In the film, it sets the stage, literally, for Sting to appear: He’s seen playing his song “Fragile” on one of the first prisoner-created guitars.
“It was wonderful to see how humbled [the prisoners] were to hear something that they’d made with their own hands,” Trudie says.
Ultimately, Trudie says she hopes viewers — especially Americans with Neapolitan roots — will watch the film and, she says, “do what I did: instead of buying into the stories of Naples being dirty and dangerous … they will take a day … to go and see the wonderful sights.”
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