IRETI

synopsis

IRETI documents the Black queer feminist movement in Cuba, following Katiuska, founder of an Afrocentric bookstore she built inside her own home. The film emerged from a careful, sensitive, and critical listening to the voices of Cuban Black women – their struggles, spiritualities, and everyday practices of resistance. Around the bookstore, what is built and shared goes beyond books: it is a community space of strength and joy. IRETI, a Yoruba word meaning “hope,” seeks to evoke this energy.

about the director

Monica Maria Garabito (1994, Cienfuegos) is a trans-disciplinary researcher and artist based between Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. Born in Cuba and raised in Germany, she studied Cultural Anthropology in Mexico and Germany and completed a Master’s degree in Documentary Filmmaking in 2025 at the International School of Film and Television (EICTV) in Cuba. Her work proposes new ways of listening and being present, in dialogue with African diasporic communities, collective memories, ancestral technologies, and radical joy.