Film

The Two Escobars

Name: The Two Escobars
Genre: Crime, Documentary
Released: 2010
Cast: Andrés Escobar, Pablo Escobar, María Ester Escobar, Francisco Maturana, Alexis García V.

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.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like documentaries that follow a single thread through the machinery of crime and sport, patiently assembling context until the stakes feel personal.

Skip it if you want a fast, high-energy sports film; this one moves at a deliberate pace, and its interviews and archive footage linger on talking heads more than on match action.

What it asks of you: Around an hour and forty minutes of patient, sober attention, with long stretches of reflection and archive material rather than quick cuts.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

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.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Two Escobars

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.

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.

Offside2006

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 Mal2012

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

The Two Escobars

Where to watch

Disney+Subscription

Checked 18 October 2026.

Age rating

We do not know what this is rated.

Ratings come from the people who assign them in each country, and they do not mean the same thing in any two. We show the one given where you are.

Released: 2010
Genre: Crime, Documentary
Status: Released
Runtime: 100 min