Gross Encounters is a workshop, festival and film screening platform developed by Reem Saleh and Noam Toran. 

This initiative tackles the politics of monstrosity and alienhood HANDS on, by honouring low-budget and low-brow sci-fi and horror productions, as we strive towards disrupting colonial legacies and traditional value systems. This collaborative and ever-expanding initiative explores the following themes: 
 
1. Monstrosity, Alienhood and Coloniality: We critically examine how perceptions of alienhood and 'otherness' are indelibly shaped by colonial and imperial legacies. The platform endeavors to disrupt these legacies by exploring alternative imaginaries.  
2. The Power of Low Budget/Low Brow Expressions: Embracing the ethos of low budget and low-brow film-making and art production, and by valuing the expressive and aesthetic expressions that society deems ‘trash’, we harness the power of peripheral genres to forge new paths towards liberation, representation and social critique. 
3. Challenging Modernism and Its Value Systems: The project helps us to confront the dominant value systems of colonial modernity and question their various manifestations.