Michael graduated with honors from Wesleyan University and trained as an actor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.In 1981, Virginia Vallejo is a famous Colombia's journalist and TV news anchorwoman who is invited to a VIPs party in the ranch of Pablo Escobar, a low-born man who gained money and power with drug trafficking together his friends, turning them in the new generation of rich men of the country. Jeff graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with honors in Art Semiotics and Modern Culture and Media, and a concentration in Latin American Studies.
The brothers' segment on The Addiction Project, HBO's 14-part series on drug abuse, continues to broadcast on HBO. Recently, All Rise finished a four part series for the Sundance Channel. Jeff and Michael's production company, All Rise Films, is a Ford Foundation grantee and has produced award-winning documentaries on third world development issues for clients such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the John Templeton Foundation. "Favela Rising" was theatrically exhibited in five continents, held over in theaters in the United Kingdom for six months, and theatrically released by ThinkFilm and HBO in 34 cities in North America. "Favela Rising," which Jeff directed, shot, edited and produced, was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Feature Length Documentary in 2005, and among the 36 international awards it has won are Film of the Year by the International Documentary Association, Best Film at the Sydney International Film Festival and Leeds International Film Festival, as well as Best Director at the Tribeca Film Festival. Jeff and Michael are Emmy Award nominated writers, directors, and editors whose films have been broadcast on HBO, MTV, PBS, Channel 4 UK, the BBC, and BET, as well as theatrically distributed throughout North America, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia. Stories such as this revive our childhood fascination with sports and confirm the fundamental role they play in shaping our world. Rather, this was the story of the passions and dreams of a people intrinsically tied to the rise and fall of a team.
On our journey through diverse walks of Colombian society during production, it became clear that this was far from a classic "deal-with-the-devil" narrative. Sport in Colombia was not only mirroring the personality and politics of society, but also an inseparable part of that society - the playing field an extension of the streets and offices where influential decisions are made. 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. 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. Like in 1994, when an athlete named Andres 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. Then, invariably, definitive moments in sports history would grab our attention and turn our logic upside down.
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 passed by. We choose these stories due to the scale of their historic importance - this is where societies are shaped.īy comparison, sports have often felt like mere diversion, games limited to the playing field. Our films tend to focus on disenfranchised communities in the process of rising up and transforming their political and economic circumstances.