Film
The Two Escobars
This ESPN 30 for 30 film braids two Colombian icons — a football captain and a cocaine emperor — into one tragedy. It's tense, meticulously reported, and quietly devastating: a country's golden football generation built on cartel money, then destroyed by it. Watch it for the history lesson dressed as a thriller, and the ache of a beautiful team falling apart in real time.
If you liked this
Narcos2015
The dramatized flip side of the same story — Pablo Escobar's rise and fall told as pulpy, propulsive crime opera, with the football connections lurking in the background throughout.
But It glamorises Escobar's violence more than the documentary ever does, and the later seasons drift from the real history.
Diego Maradona2019
Asif Kapadia's found-footage portrait of another South American football god swallowed by the forces around him — fame, mafia money, self-destruction, all in gorgeous archival texture.
But No talking heads to explain context, so you need some prior interest in football or Maradona to stay oriented.
O.J.: Made in America2016
The gold standard for this genre: a sports icon, a nation's obsession, and a crime that exposes everything rotten underneath. Five hours that never sag.
But It's a serious time commitment, and its focus on race and celebrity in America is a different story than Colombia's.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
When We Were Kings1996
Same structure as Escobar's Colombia: a beloved sport used to launder a violent power's image, with the athletes caught in the middle, half-aware of the price.
Muhammad Ali's Rumble in the Jungle, bankrolled by a dictator desperate for legitimacy — a sporting spectacle built on money nobody wanted to question too closely.
But It's a celebration of Ali's charisma more than an exposé, so the darker financing stays mostly in the background.
More like this (8)
Icarus2017
Starts as a personal doping experiment and turns into a genuine geopolitical thriller about state corruption hijacking sport from the inside — jaw-dropping in the same way.
But The tonal swing from quirky personal project to Kremlin conspiracy can feel like two different films stitched together.
Cocaine Cowboys2006
The Medellín cartel's other export, told through the Miami traffickers and cops who lived it — same era, same money, a gaudier, more lawless battlefield.
But It's more interested in lurid spectacle than moral reckoning, and some subjects clearly relish their own legend.
Sicario2015
A fictional descent into the drug war's machinery, shot with the same dread that hangs over every frame of Escobar's story — brutal, beautifully made, unresolved.
But It's bleak by design and offers no catharsis; if you wanted history, you'll have to look elsewhere.
The Last Dance2020
Another ESPN production applying the same forensic, archive-heavy method to a sporting golden era — obsession, money, and a team that couldn't hold together.
But Michael Jordan controlled the access, so it's a more flattering, less dangerous story than the one you just watched.
Amy2015
A different kind of public death by a thousand small failures — talent consumed by the systems and people around it, told entirely through archive footage.
But It's about music, not sport or crime, so the connection is tonal and structural rather than direct.
City of God2002
A Brazilian favela crime saga showing the other side of Latin American drug violence — kids, guns, no way out, filmed with electric, restless urgency.
But It's a fictional, hyper-stylised gang epic, not journalism, and considerably more violent on screen.
Offside2006no page yet
Both use football as the lens for a country's real power struggles — who controls the game controls the story a nation tells about itself.
An Iranian comedy-drama about girls sneaking into a World Cup qualifier disguised as boys, because women are banned from stadiums — football as a battleground for who belongs.
But It's gentle, funny, and almost plotless by comparison — no crime, no death, just bureaucratic absurdity.
Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal2012no page yet
The same true story, but staying home rather than exporting itself — how the country that lived it chose to tell it to itself, at ten times the length.
The Colombian telenovela version — over a hundred episodes, made with input from people who actually knew Escobar, and a phenomenon at home unmatched by any English-language retelling.
But It's melodrama at soap-opera length and pace; the restraint and rigor of the documentary is nowhere in sight.
People
Cast
Andrés EscobarSelf (archive footage)
Pablo EscobarSelf (archive footage)- Alexis García V.Self
Directing
- Jeff ZimbalistDirector
- Michael ZimbalistDirector
Writing
- Jeff ZimbalistWriter
- Michael ZimbalistWriter
Production
- Jeff ZimbalistProducer
- Michael ZimbalistProducer