The Two Escobars

Probably the only thing produced by ESPN that will ever screen at the Cannes Film Festival, Jeff and Michael Zimbalist’s powerful and fascinating The Two Escobars is one of the best documentaries of 2010. Originally produced as part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series, The Two Escobars offers a probing and emotional look at the connections between the Pablo Escobar-led drug cartels and the sudden rise of Colombian soccer as an international power in the late 1980s. The film introduces the little known legacy of “narco-fútbol,” in which Colombian drug kingpins purchased their own teams of high-priced soccer talent to play against each other. Intertwined in all of this is Medellin-born footballer Andres Escobar, a fair-play advocate who became the first Colombian signed to AC Milan, until his own goal at the World Cup led to tragedy.