Benny Torati’s 2001 film, KIKAR HA-‘HALAMOT [DESPERADO SQUARE] is commonly read as a radically subversive film. In its local-national Israeli context, the film is regarded as an endeavor to rewrite cinematic representations of Mizrahi (Oriental) Jews in Israel and, further, to imagine Mizrahi identity outside of the Israeli nation state. Crucial to this endeavor is the dialogue the film maintains with both the Israeli formulaic comedies of the 1970s and 1980s and with “world cinema.” Critics consequentially hold that Torati turns to “world cinema” to undo local models of representations. A close examination of cinematic references throughout DESPERADO SQUARE would show, however, that the case is the opposite: the film follows the Israeli cinematic tradition while subverting models derived from its trans-national references. The subversiveness of DESPERADO SQUARE is commonly located in its depiction of a world sans Ashkenazi (European) Jews. In this, the film is said to depart from the tradition of ethnic representations in Israeli filmic comedies which tie together the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi characters and insist on reconciling the ethnicities within the nation state. Yet, a re-examination of the filmic canon would show that other films also excise the Ashkenazi from the Israeli film-space and, accordingly, we should rethink the film’s subversive power. In its recurrent gestures towards such “international” (from the local, Israeli perspective) films as Tornatore’s CINEMA PARADISO and Kapoor’s SANGAM, Torati’s film manifests a desire to be inserted into a cultural space beyond the Israeli nation state. Curiously, it is here that the film performs a much more radical re-writing. A central aspect of the plot of CINEMA PARADISO and SANGAM is military service, which marks the intrusion of the nation upon the local. This aspect, however, is completely elided from Torati’s film. Inasmuch as Tornatore and Kapoor root their characters in the nation, their “trans-national” films are, in effect, quite national. Torati, on the other hand, refuses and defies such “nationalization.” DESPERADO SQUARE thus calls for the reassessment of the relationship between local, national, and trans-national cinemas. It further raises the question what is at stake by reading a film within its “national” context versus its “trans-national” one.