‘Two Escobars’ Directors: Changing the Perception of Colombia Through Death, Soccer

Despite the inherent tragedy of the story we were telling, we hoped We hoped our portrayal could reflect our own positive perception of the country — but what if reality didn’t naturally accomplish this end?

Our films tend to focus on disenfranchised communities in the process of rising up and transforming their political and economic circumstances. With "Favela Rising," Jeff looked beyond the dominant images of violence that defined media coverage of Brazil’s shantytowns to find an innovative model of inside-out community development that can be reproduced across the world in urban areas facing similar adversities of violence, poverty and neglect.

"Favela Rising's" critical success was not only a testament to the powerful narrative of the Afro-Reggae cultural movement, but also proof that contemporary audiences want to engage with positive stories of change.

We received similar enthusiasm when we launched a project chronicling the formation of the first Peace Community in Latin America, one of many communities successfully beating the odds in areas often portrayed as lost causes. We choose these stories due to the scale of their historic importance — this is where societies are shaped.

By comparison, sports have often felt like mere diversion, games limited to the playing field. At times, we have both drifted from the passion for sports we shared as young athletes and fans, engaging ourselves in other endeavors as seasons of professional competition have passed us by.

Then, invariably, definitive moments in sports history would grab our attention and turn our logic upside down. Like in 1994, when an athlete named Andrés Escobar was murdered for accidentally scoring an own-goal that cost the Colombian National Team a chance at winning the World Cup and transforming its negative image on the international stage.

Here was a country with a national identity so integrally connected to the success of its soccer team that one mistake on a playing field dashed the pride of an entire nation and cost a man his life.

Looking into the incident, we learned that the dramatic rise and fall of Colombian soccer was inextricably tied to the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Drug Cartel, considered by many the "ruling party" of Colombia at the time. Sport in Colombia was not only mirroring the personality and politics of society, but was in fact an inseparable part of that society — the playing field an extension of the streets and offices where influential decisions were made. 

We hoped that by highlighting the universal themes in the journeys of Pablo Escobar and Andrés Escobar, the film would appeal to an international audience lacking an understanding of the transcendent impact soccer can have on a society. If, for example, our film could help audiences in the United States learn to speak the language of soccer and experience its importance to national identity worldwide, then might soccer help facilitate dialogue with our cultural and class counterparts abroad?

And yet, we recognized that this optimistic thinking was motivated in part by our desire to convince ourselves that we weren’t just telling another tragic story about a country already victimized by too many damaging associations. 

In fact, the story of "The Two Escobars" seemed to undeniably contradict our mission statement of telling positive stories in places almost always portrayed negatively. For starters, Andrés Escobar was an athlete who lost his life for an innocent mistake made on a playing field, and Pablo Escobar — for all his Robin Hood generosity to Colombia’s poor — was still a terrorist responsible for thousands of deaths. 

And most pointedly, soccer actually failed to redefine Colombia’s international image, and Andrés’ murder ended up extending the negative stereotypes of Colombia as nothing more than a hotbed of violence and corruption. 

We came up empty when looking for a prescriptive through-line about positive change, and yet, the story felt substantial and exciting, as if we hadn’t yet comprehended its full potential. So, operating without a pre-formulated agenda for the first time in our documentary careers, we chose to follow the story’s message where it led us, rather than vice versa. 

We hoped a positive takeaway would organically emerge as we dug deeper. However, if it didn’t — would the project still be a worthwhile investment of our time, or would it be mere entertainment, subject to the same criticisms we had of sports for all these years?

Production was a ride; a precarious teetering between danger and inspiration, much like the country of Colombia itself. Gaining access to interview subjects was challenging. Even 16 years after the death of Pablo Escobar, many people in Colombia still refuse to utter his name, not only because it is taboo to discuss the drug cartels, but because it could prove dangerous. 

Furthermore, nearly every Colombian lost loved ones as innocent victims of random violence during the reign of Pablo Escobar and the PEPEs, and understandably, many people are not ready or not willing to revisit such traumatic memories … particularly when a camera is involved. 

We rented an apartment in Colombia and, over the months, conversations turned into friendships.   Eventually, over 35 individuals — including the family and henchmen of Pablo, the teammates and loved ones of Andrés, and prominent government officials — entrusted us with interviews, most lasting over two hours and full of authentic, profound emotion. 

Several interviewees later remarked that sharing these previously bottled up feelings with us in a controlled setting felt cathartic, even therapeutic. They suggested that dialogue and expression was an integral part of the healing process, but that few forums for this were currently available in their daily lives in Colombia.

As our journey branched out to unanticipated destinations in many diverse walks of Colombian society, and as we dug through hundreds of hours of never-before-seen archives — including the personal archives of Pablo Escobar’s family — we were introduced to the polarized passions of both those who saw Pablo as the devil as well as those who saw him as an angel. It became clear that this was far from a classic “deal-with-the-devil” narrative.  

Intimate archival scenes of Pablo Escobar supported a more three dimensional portrait of this complex historical figure than the clichéd representations of the mythical Mafioso or the glorified playboy. On the soccer side, the film was shaping up to be the first expose of the little known phenomenon of “narco-soccer,” a focus that, as we had feared, served to confirm the popular portrayal of Colombia as a place where things are only falling apart. 

And yet, Colombian soccer at that time also mobilized the passions and dreams of the country, restoring a sense of pride and self worth during a time of great uncertainty and suffering. Even if these contradictions didn’t paint a picture of a united population making impressive strides in coming together and blazing an innovative path into a brighter future, they did defy common perceptions.

This started to feel consistent with our continued experience of Colombia, a country whose extremes and contradictions we’d come to love over the course of years of working and living there.

As the edit progressed, we continued to faithfully follow the story wherever it led us and finally, slowly, the path to reconcile our ethical dilemma revealed itself, not as a strike-of-lightening epiphany, but rather as a gradual surrender to the voices of the subjects themselves. In particular, by hitching our wagon to the messages of Andrés Escobar, his former fiancé, family and teammates, we were giving voice to the majority population of peace-loving, law-abiding, moral Colombians who have historically been left out of nearly all mainstream portrayals of the country. 

Most Colombians we know agree that Andrés’ death was not in vain, but rather, marked the beginning of a process of healing. They point to the great strides Colombia has made in reducing violence and weeding illicit money out of the country’s institutions, as well as the symbol of purity and forgiveness that Andrés’ remembrance has become for young generations of Colombians in desperate need of positive role models.

"The Two Escobars" has now screened to festival and theatrical audiences around the world. When we ask those who have seen the film if they feel it has changed their image of Colombia — much as Andrés Escobar, with his stand-up personality and graceful style of play, once sought to do — the response has been overwhelmingly affirmative. 

Reflecting back on our initial hesitance to depart from solution-based, positive message narratives, we now find ourselves embracing the transformative power of even the most tragic stories. It is not only the social-cause documentary that contains universal lessons and the potential to ignite social change, but storytelling itself. 

Sometimes it is within a tragic context that we find our deepest empathetic connection to others, perhaps because we know from our own lives that often the human journey does not end in outward victory, but inward conviction. And from inner conviction, the healing process begins.

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