Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord, narcoterrorist, and politician, who was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel. Dubbed "the king of cocaine", Escobar was one of the wealthiest criminals in history, having amassed an estimated net worth of US$30 billion by the time of his death—equivalent to $70 billion as of 2022—while his drug cartel monopolized the cocaine trade into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez is a Puerto Rican actor. He has garnered critical acclaim and numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe, and a Silver Bear for his portrayal of the jaded but morally upright police officer Javier Rodriguez in the film Traffic (2000). Del Toro's performance as despairing ex-con turned zealot Jack Jordan, in Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams (2003), earned him a second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Stoner film is a subgenre of comedy film based on marijuana themes, where recreational use often drives the plot, sometimes representing cannabis culture more broadly or intended for that audience.
Wall to Wall Media, part of Warner Bros. Television Studios UK, is a television production company that produces event specials and drama, factual entertainment, science and history programmes for broadcast by networks in both the United Kingdom and United States. Its productions include Who Do You Think You Are?, New Tricks, Child Genius, and Long Lost Family.
The Juárez Cartel, also known as the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Organization, is a Mexican drug cartel based in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, across the Mexico—U.S. border from El Paso, Texas. The cartel is one of several drug trafficking organizations that have been known to decapitate their rivals, mutilate their corpses and dump them in public places to instill fear not only in the general public but also in local law enforcement and their rivals, the Sinaloa Cartel. Its current known leader is Juan Pablo Ledezma. The Juárez Cartel has an armed wing known as La Línea, a Juárez street gang that usually performs the executions and is now the cartel’s most powerful and leading faction. It also uses the Barrio Azteca gang to attack its enemies.
The Mexican drug war is an ongoing asymmetric armed conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military intervened in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is dismantling the cartels and preventing drug trafficking. The conflict has been described as the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the United States federal government.
The depiction of Colombia in popular culture, especially the portrayal of Colombian people in film and fiction, has been asserted by Colombian organizations and government to be largely negative and has raised concerns that it reinforces, or even engenders, societal prejudice and discrimination due to association with narco-trafficking, terrorism, illegal immigration and other criminal elements, poverty and welfare. The Colombian government-funded Colombia is Passion advertisement campaign as an attempt to improve Colombia's image abroad, with mixed results hoping for more positive views on Colombia.
Mahboubeh Honarian is an Iranian-Canadian film director and film producer. She was awarded her MSc in engineering multimedia and BA in Humanities with a media and cultural studies bias in the United Kingdom.
The Empire Awards was an annual British awards ceremony honouring cinematic achievements in the local and global film industry. Winners were awarded the Empire Award statuette. The awards, first presented in 1996, were presented by the British film magazine Empire with the winners voted by the readers of the magazine.
Andrew "Andy" Kubiszewski is an American musician, songwriter, remixer and producer. He has worked with bands Exotic Birds and Stabbing Westward, contributed to several other bands, and composed music for TV shows and films.
Joe Walker is a British film editor who has worked in both England and Los Angeles. In 2022, he won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for his work on Dune, having been nominated twice before for 12 Years a Slave and Arrival. For the American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic he has received a string of five nominations over eight years and in 2016 he won, for Arrival. He took the European Film Award for Best Editor for Shame in 2012 and Satellite Award for Best Editing for Sicario in 2016.
Andrés Parra Medina is a Colombian film and television actor. He is best known for portraying the drug lord Pablo Escobar in the Canal Caracol TV series Pablo Escobar, el patrón del mal.
Sicario is a 2015 American action thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Taylor Sheridan and starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin. The film follows a principled FBI special agent who is enlisted by a government task force to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel. Sicario was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. It began a limited release in the United States on September 18, 2015, followed by a nationwide release on October 2, 2015.
Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, also known by the alias "Popeye" or "JJ", was a Colombian hitman, who was part of the criminal structure of the Medellín Cartel until his surrender to the Colombian justice system in 1992. Within this structure he claimed to be a lieutenant commanding half of the sicarios.
