NO TIME TO DIE
Director: King Ampaw
Feature film | D/GH | 2006
95 min | Stereo
41st Hof International Film Festival
2007
Asante works as a hearse driver in Ghana, a profession that plays an important role in Ghanaese society with its pronounced cult of the dead. For a funeral, families run up debts like elsewhere for a wedding. And to enable the scattered family members to come to the funeral, often from abroad, corpses are often kept frozen for weeks in the mortuary. Only then does the deceased find his or her last peace in a colourful coffin that often looks like his or her favourite food or car.
But Asante’s profession turns out to have a hitch: He’s too close to death and therefore all women avoid his company, he can’t find a girl. Until one day attractive Esi, a young traditional dancer, steps into his life. She wants to transport the dead body of her beloved mother back to the village. For Asante, it’s love at first sight, and he sets out to win her heart. And indeed, soon his dreams appear to come true, but then Esi’s father categorically refuses to contemplate his daughter’s marriage with Asante – “over my dead body”, he says …