The critically-acclaimed documentary “The Two Escobars” was shown Thursday in the Cape Cod Lounge at the University of Massachusetts, with director and producer Jeff Zimbalist participating in a question-and-answer session after the film.

The viewing was arranged by the UMass journalism program and sponsored by alumna Elisa Thomas.

“The Two Escobars” was directed and produced by Northampton natives Jeff and his brother Michael Zimbalist. The film investigates the relationship between soccer and crime in Colombia during the reign of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. It was originally produced for ESPN’s “30 for 30” documentary series to celebrate the station’s 30th anniversary. The movie has been shown in festivals and screenings spanning the entire globe, including the Tribeca Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Festival.

“My brother and I had been working in Latin America for a long time, and we were making another film in Colombia at the time that ESPN approached us for the 30th anniversary series. They wanted to do more diverse stories to celebrate their anniversary, but also to comment on the intersection of sports and society,” said Zimbalist.

The story of “The Two Escobars” focuses on the Colombian national soccer team and its captain, Andres Escobar, in the years leading up to and surrounding the 1994 World Cup in the United States. Andres was shot and murdered on July 2, less than a month after the World Cup, in which Colombia fared poorly. Esccobar scored a  goal in the loss against the United States that sealed their elimination.

“As soon as we got down there, it ended up being a much bigger story than expected,” said Zimbalist.  “Who pulled the trigger that night on Andres was not nearly as interesting as what kind of society would allow for an athlete to be murdered for a mistake that he made on the playing field.”

“So that was the central question that we went after to investigate,” he said, “and in order to understand that, we had to understand Narco-football, which was this whole phenomenon that had never been exposed as far as mainstream international media is concerned.”

Narco-football referred to the concept that during this time, organized soccer and the drug trade were sometimes joint ventures in Colombia. Drug lords such as Pablo Escobar bought soccer teams because they saw soccer as an avenue to make money. The soccer teams were funded by the drug cartels’ excessive wealth, and, as a result, soccer teams in Colombia became some of the best in the world

“We went into that [with the question:] how is a U.S. audience, how is an international audience going to understand all this if they don’t understand narco, if they don’t understand Pablo Escobar’s influence on Colombia,” said Zimbalist.

Zimbalist said he often encountered reluctance when he interviewed Colombians about the topic, because some of his interviewees felt it was still dangerous to talk about Pablo Escobar and that time period. They feared that if they said the wrong thing to the wrong person, there could be severe consequences, Zimbalist explained. Many Colombians lost somebody they loved during that time period, Zimbalist claimed, and getting victims’ friends and family to talk about Pablo Escobar’s reign was not something some were willing to do at first, said Zimbalist. “It was very emotional, but when people did open up, they found it therapeutic to sit down and talk about it,” he said.

“In general, it was more challenging than other projects we’ve had, but ultimately I think it was healthy for people who participated,” he added.

The pervasive societal disorder during this era in Colombia played a major role in the film. The story was told through the characters closest to both of the Escobars, giving the film a feeling of intimacy.

“I just liked the complexity of the situation.,” said Zimbalist. “I liked that there was no obvious good guys and bad guys. I liked the irony of the president of the country investing a bunch of money into a soccer team as the poster children of a new Colombia that was pure and clean and not connected to narco. Those forced alliances, and what is said in public versus what is done in private, all of that was fascinating.”

Stephen Canning can be reached at [email protected].