Exclusive: Trudie Styler opens up about family pride, directing Sting and her tech-free grandkids

Wandering around the labyrinthine backstreets of Naples, taking in its faded elegance and dark romance, Trudie Styler adds a touch of celebrity glamour to the Italian city and the subject of her most recent film.

She's usually to be found in a more rural setting: the 900-acre wine-making estate in Tuscany, that she shares with Sting, her husband of over 30 years and where the A-list couple celebrate their wedding anniversary every year.

Hers is an enviable lifestyle – her Instagram is filled with global travel and lavish social events and dinners with celebrity friends, from former model Iman to filmmaker Guy Ritchie (she is godmother to Rocco, his son with Madonna) and hosting star-studded parties at her New York residence.

But she is so much more than just Mrs Sting. A former actress who performed with the Royal Shakespeare company, Trudie, 71, has over the last 20 years enjoyed a long and impressive career as a filmmaker.

With her two production companies she's made both award-winning documentaries and feature films, including Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, while also championing first-time filmmakers and promoting female talent.

Her most recent project is a love letter to the Southern European city, renowned for its links with the mafia - or the Camorra, as the Neopolitan mob is known. Posso Entrare? An Ode to Naples is a beautiful and heartwarming profile of a place told through its people, with a cameo appearance by Sting.

Trudie knows Italy well – she worked there for three years as an actress at the beginning of her career, she tells us – but had only been to Naples once many years ago.

"Sting was playing, but I don't have much of a memory, except it was a very rainy night," she says. "I discounted [the city] afterwards, in the way that people have an avoidance of Naples – they minimise it as too dirty and too dangerous, and I was one of those people."

The film focuses on the Sanita area and one of its lynchpins, Don Antonio Loffredo, a priest who helps transform the lives of young people and steer them away from a life with the mafia. He introduces her to many of the film's cast of characters although many others she finds herself, wandering the streets where multi-generational families live cheek-by-jowl.

"Some of the low income houses are on street level, and when the shutters are open, you see into their worlds, living their lives," she tells us. "I thought I'd go and see if some of the locals would give me an interview. So I'd tap on the shutter and say, 'Posso entrare, Senora? [Can I come in?] And every time they'd give big, beaming smiles and the coffee would be brought out and the kids would be sitting on my knee and good conversation would ensue."

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Although on paper worlds apart, there was a familiarity for Trudie, who grew up in Bromwich in the East Midlands.

"I reminded myself of Wall's Road, going into my Auntie Josie's – everybody was auntie or uncle, watching out for the kids on the street. I was often ticked off by one of them, for me and my sister falling out. 'You get back home, you're too far away' or 'Does your mum know you're there?'" she remembers, laughing.

"It was the council house estate and everybody watched out for everybody, and Sanita is very similar. They all know each other and help each other out in bad times."

Her favourite interviewee is clearly Nora Liello, a 90-year-old who swims in the Mediterranean every day for an hour and lived through the Nazi occupation. Others are jus as compelling, including Roberto Saviano, the Neopolitan author famous for his book Gomorrah who lives under a death threat from the camorra and Alessandra Clemente, a councillor whose mother was killed in a mafia shoot out.

Sting's appearance in the film was by request of Don Antonio, who wanted to involve the star in a performance, playing a guitar which had been made by prisoners from the wood of an abandoned migrant boat washed up on the shore.

"I asked the governess of the prison if she'd mind if the men who made the guitar listened to it being played for the first time," says Trudie. "It was very moving for everybody, including the men. I asked them what their feelings were about the instrument, and they said it made them miss home, and think about the people who had been in the boat.

"Sting went and shook all their hands, and said hello," she says of her husband, who played his powerful song Fragile. "They were grateful."

It was clearly a passion project for the filmmaker who relished her director role. "Directing uses more of the actor's brain – it's a right brain activity, very creative, even making a documentary because you have to put it together and figure out the what, when and why," she says, adding that she loves the variety of her working life.

"Every day is a new day. And those of us lucky enough to work in the arts, you don't have a day that's similar, because you're working on a story either as a producer, or in this case, as a director."

She is inspired most, she says, by her four adult children – Mickey, an actress; Jake, a director and writer; Eliot, a singer-songwriter and Giacomo, who has pursued a career away from the limelight.

"They're very hard working, all the kids, and are pursuing their own goals and dreams. And my grandkids," she adds, her face lighting up.

"I'm happy to say they're not allowed devices – their mums are very good about keeping them off the iPhones and internet. And I think as a result of that, they retain their childhoods a little longer, so I'm happy about that."

Posso Entrare? An Ode to Naples is streaming on Disney+ from 24th January.

To read the full exclusive interview, pick up the latest issue of HELLO! on sale in the UK on Monday. You can subscribe to HELLO! to get the magazine delivered free to your door every week or purchase the digital edition online via our Apple or Google apps.