The Two Escobars

The Two Escobars (2010)

Sometimes it really is a matter of life and death

Pablo Escobar was the richest, most powerful drug kingpin in the world, ruling the Medellin Cartel with an iron fist. Andres Escobar was the biggest soccer star in Colombia. The two were not related, but their fates were inextricably-and fatally-intertwined. Pablo's drug money had turned Andres' national team into South American champions, favored to win the 1994 World Cup in Los Angeles. It was there, in a game against the U.S., that Andres committed one of the most shocking mistakes in soccer history, scoring an "own goal" that eliminated his team from the competition and ultimately cost him his life. The Two Escobars is a riveting examination of the intersection of sports, crime, and politics.

Date of release
2010-06-22
TMDB
7.4 / 10 (51)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Crime, Documentary
Director
Jeff Zimbalist, Michael Zimbalist

Casting

Interesting facts

The Two Escobars is a 2010 sports documentary film written and directed by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist. It was co-produced by ESPN and All Rise Films for ESPN's 30 for 30 series. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, 2010 and was released on June 22, 2010 on ESPN.

Background

Directors and brothers Michael and Jeff Zimbalist were in Colombia in 2009, working on an unrelated documentary, when they were approached by ESPN films, who had just launched the 30 for 30 Series. The concept of the series was to produce 30 documentary films by 30 filmmakers, each focusing on an event demonstrating the interaction between sports and society over the last 30 years.

The directors said that they soon discovered that in order to tell the story, they had to learn the complexities of “narco-soccer”: the relationship between wealthy drug lords and the soccer teams they supported. They also had to portray the conflicted feelings Colombians had about it, in that half the country saw Pablo Escobar as a hero who helped the poor, while others saw him as a sociopathic murderer, who destabilized every aspect of Colombia…

Jeff Zimbalist said they conducted 43 interviews, most of which were one to two hours in length. Many of the people interviewed had never before spoken about the difficult and often painful issues involved, and some had never filmed an interview before. Interview subjects included football players and coaches, friends and family members of the two Escobars, judges and government officials, including the former President of Colombia, U.S.

Zimbalist said that when they finished their first cut of the film, it was roughly 100 minutes, much longer than the typical 30 for 30 film. "We feared ESPN wouldn't get behind a 100 minute, subtitled, Spanish language documentary that was arguably more about politics and national identity than it was about sports, not to mention that the sport was soccer. To our surprise, ESPN loved it and approved a primetime airing of the full 100 minute cut."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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