In recent years Israeli cinema gained an increased popularity at home, and at the same time realized a considerable move on its path to international awareness. This growing interest in Israeli films in leading international film festivals and among distributers that appeal to niche markets worldwide coincides with a consistent growth in interest and market openness to emerging cinemas at large. The paper posits that such films are “minor”1 films, constructed in the classical tradition of narrative storytelling, while subverting its form from within to enunciate that which is unique to their culture. These departures from the representational model parallel their political standing which seeks a de-territorialization of the national to an expression that is creative rather than reflective of identity. Over the past decade, the emergence of local cinematic texts has formed a transnational web of themes upon which national cinemas thrive and assume their mobility across cultural borders. In this web, the fragmented national forgrounds local particularities that engage global audiences by way of association with similar localities in variable social contexts. One of the prominent themes to surface from this emergece narrates the stories of women and their oppression. The Israeli film Kadosh (Amos Gitai, Israel, 1999) which tells the story of a childless married woman at the heart of a Jerusalem ultra-orthodox enclave, is analyzed in relation to this category, and in relation to the stories of women in the films Atash (Tawfik Abu Wael, Israel/ Palestine, 2004), and Water (Deepa Mehta, Canada / India, 2005).