Zeit zu sterbenis the German title ofTiempo de morir, known in English as(A) Time to Die.The Colombian-Cuban co-production is based on a script byGabriel García Márquez. Directed byJorge Alí Triana, the film stars Gustavo Angarita, María Eugenia Dávila, Enrique Almirante, and Sebastián Ospina. The art on the poster for the East German release byProgress Filmsuggests a rooster’s head, with the beak depicted as a bullet. The tombstone-like letters for the title are fromBuster.
This typography communicates a stark, fatalistic gravitas befitting a García Márquez adaptation about mortality and inevitability. The tombstone-like Buster lettering creates an imposing, monumental presence that feels carved from stone, while Univers provides clinical precision that suggests the cold finality of death approaching.
Buster's heavy, condensed letterforms with brutal slab-serif terminals create the literal tombstone effect described, with high contrast and compressed proportions that feel carved and permanent. The pairing with Univers leverages the Swiss typeface's neutral authority and precise geometry to ground the dramatic display work, creating typographic tension between emotional weight and clinical detachment.
The contrast between Buster's expressive, death-heavy monumentality and Univers' cold rationality mirrors the film's themes of fate versus human agency. This creates a hierarchy where emotion (the title's inevitability) dominates while information (credits, details) remains clinically detached, reinforcing the existential weight of the narrative.