Sports footage and a nation in self-destruct mode Watching the The Two Escobars brought back a flood of memories

and a closure of sorts. The year was 1994, an era before the advent of cable TV and internet revolution; As a school boy growing up in Malgudi-esque Mysore, Prannoy Roys World This Week was my only window to the happenings of the world outside. Two sports newsreel footage from those times got etched in my memory An air ambulance helicopter taking off from the tarmac after San Marino Grand Prix Crash and Andres Escobars own goal in FIFA world cup. Both, of South American sports icons that had a considerable impact on the hopes and dreams of their countrymen. Although the story of Brazilian F1 driver Ayrton Senna is well known and widely celebrated, the Colombian Soccer captain Andres Escobars tragic death has been shrouded in mystery for long. The Two Escobars not only demystifies this but also paints a remarkably gripping and emotional picture of a nation in throes of turmoil while outgrowing its narco-mafia legacy with soccer as the only unifying and redeeming agent. Once archival sports footage now unfolded to become a telling portrait of a nation in distress, the struggle of it people with poverty and narcotic violence, its sporting triumph and tragedy, its hopes and despair. Events in reality are always interconnected and have stories behind them and perhaps only cinema can effectively document and recreate these as an emotional experience that brings closure to some of those unanswered questions hidden in memory and obscured by time.