IRETI
by Monica Maria Garabito
Cuba, 2025
synopsis
IRETI documents the Black queer feminist movement in Cuba, followingKatiuska, founder of an Afrocentric bookstore she built inside her own home. The film emerged from a careful, sensitive, and critical listening tothe voices of Cuban Black women – their struggles, spiritualities, andeveryday practices of resistance. Around the bookstore, what is built andshared 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 atransdisziplinary researcher and artist based betweenRio den Janeiro and Berlin. Born in Cuba and raised inGermany, she studied Cultural Anthropology in Mexicoand Germany and completed a Master’s degree inDocumentary Filmmaking in 2025 at the InternationalSchool of Film and Television (EICTV) in Cuba. Her workproposes new ways of listening and being present, indialogue with African diasporic communities, collectivememories, ancestral technologies, and radical joy.
