Woodstock Film Festival: A Conversation with Comparsa Co-Director Doug Anderson

Next in our 26th Annual Woodstock Film Festival interview series we feature Doug Anderson, Co-Director of the new documentary film, Comparsa. Doug co-directed the film with Vicki Curtis, Emmy-winning writer of the Netflix originals, The Social Dilemma and Chasing Coral.

Doug is a film director, producer and sound engineer based in New York. Under the documentary production collective Paper Moth Media, Doug and his partner, Sophie Luo have directed and produced work for social justice organizations and causes including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s history-making 2018 campaign. Recent cinematography credits include To The End (Sundance 2022) and The Providers (Independent Lens). His sound credits include Knock Down The House (Netflix), To the End (Hulu), Pride (FX), Class Divide (HBO), and Bonding (Netflix).

Comparsa, Doug’s latest work and his first feature film, is a documentary about two sisters in Guatemala who use a community street festival with puppets, music, and fire to fight back against gender-based violence and trauma. The film explores how the sisters, Lesli and Lupe Pérez, channel their grief and the community’s anger into a joyful and defiant act of art and resistance. To learn more about Doug and his work, click here for tickets and check out our exclusive interview below.

INSIDE+OUT: Your latest film is part of this year’s festival lineup — what can audiences expect, and what was the creative vision behind it?

Doug Anderson: At its heart, Comparsa is about the power of art to transform and to heal, even in the face of extreme adversity. It is also a story of sisterhood, both within a family and across a community.

Audiences will be transported to Peronia—an urban neighborhood in Guatemala known for crushing poverty and violent crime. They will spend 79 minutes getting to know a charismatic pair of sisters, Lesli and Lupe Pérez, following them on a journey from devastating trauma to transcendent triumph.

When we set out to make this film in 2019, my co-director, Vickie Curtis and I wanted to find a personal story that would take audiences on a powerful emotional journey. In Lesli and Lupe, we found two ideal film participants: generous people with magnetic personalities who were open to sharing their lives and being fully themselves. What’s more, we had also found two brilliant artists, producers, and writers who were able to bring much of their talent and creative voice to the making of the film.

Was there a defining moment or influence that led you to the film industry, and how has that shaped your journey?

Doug Anderson: I was a physics major in college, but I spent my junior year in Italy in a full-immersion language program, focusing on Italian film history, with nary a whiff of science or math. I watched a lot of movies—Visconti, Pasolini, De Sica, Fellini – and wrote a lot of what I’m sure were bad essays about them in Italian.

When I came back to campus for my senior year, my physics advisor looked at my middling physics grades, sat me down, and told me, “If you want to make movies, you should make movies.”

Can you share a memorable moment or story that stood out for you while working on this film? Any funny or wild story that happened before filming or while on set?

Doug Anderson: On our very first shoot in 2019, we went to a sprawling cemetery near the center of Guatemala City to film some experimental footage with Lesli and Lupe. These were still very early days as we were feeling our way toward a story and a visual language.

The cemetery is perched on a crumbling cliff overlooking the vast Zone 3 garbage dump. Vultures were everywhere—leering down from every tomb.

During one take, I was recording sound. While fiddling with knobs on my mixer, I accidentally stepped a little too close to the cliff’s edge, lost my footing, and got caught in a shrub growing out from the side of the cliff. Vultures circled above. Nineteen-year-old Lesli sprang into action, grabbed me by my sound-kit harness, and hauled me back up onto solid ground.

As technology continues to transform how stories are made and shared, where do you see the biggest opportunities or challenges for creators?

Doug Anderson: For the kinds of documentaries I want to make, much of the creativity lies in the editing process, sifting through vast amounts of footage and experimenting with different combinations of elements. That’s why advancements in transcription, translation, and searchability are hugely helpful. In the six years we have been working on Comparsa, these features have become way more reliable. I think we’re very close to much more complex searches being built into editing software—not just simple keyword searches, but also thematic or visually descriptive searches—and that excites me.

Of course, AI has the potential to create a lot of fake stuff that seems real, and that is concerning. People who make documentaries are already constantly making decisions about what types of manipulations are justified and which are not. Whatever technological upheaval is coming, my job is to stay true to my sense of what serves the greater truth of the story I’m telling.

Was there a moment in your career that fundamentally changed how you approach your craft?

Doug Anderson: Early in the edit process for Comparsa, one of our very talented editor collaborators, someone very experienced whose work I really admire, encouraged me to start editing scenes for the movie myself. It was a subtle nudge, but hearing it from this person made me more confident in taking on that role, and I’m glad I did.

When people look back on your body of work, what do you hope they see?

Doug Anderson: Since Comparsa is my first feature film, I hope to be lucky enough to continue exploring rabbit holes that others might not have considered, but that draw me in and sustain my curiosity and passion. I hope that once others come along for the ride, they’ll experience something unique that stays with them, even just a little bit.

What is your current state of mind?

Doug Anderson: Brimming with pride for the incredible team of people who contributed so much talent and hard work to make this movie happen.

Photos courtesy of Comparsa

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About the Woodstock Film Festival

The 26th Annual Woodstock Film Festival brings a slate of distinguished films to screen from October 15 to October 19, 2025, at venues across the Hudson Valley towns of Woodstock, Rosendale, Kingston and Saugerties.

Founded in 2000, the Woodstock Film Festival (WFF) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that nurtures and supports emerging and established filmmakers. WFF provides innovative mentoring and inspired educational programs benefitting filmmakers, students and diverse audiences while serving as a powerful cultural and economic engine for New York’s Hudson Valley and beyond. Such efforts have consistently resulted in the festival being hailed as one of the top regional film festivals worldwide. 

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Now in its 26th year, 2025 promises to be as exciting as ever. See you there!

 Click HERE for this year’s full line up + film guide

Click HERE for schedule and tickets