Starring Günes Sensoy. In Turkish, with English subtitles. Rated PG.

Too bad Mustang didn’t screen sooner, because it is certainly one of the best films of 2015. The tone and setting are notably different from those of Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, but it is a lyrical depiction of five adolescent sisters in unexpectedly dire circumstances.

It’s also a beautifully realized debut feature for its Turkish-born, Paris-based writer-director, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, scripting with French filmmaker Alice Winocour. Like Virgin, which was adapted from a popular novel, Mustang has a literary feel, emphasized by a voice-over reminiscence from the youngest sibling, Lale, played by Günes Sensoy. The device is dropped halfway in—one of the few flaws in this foreign-language Oscar nominee.

The girls seem to have an idyllic existence in Turkey’s far northeast, a thousand kilometres from Istanbul, with little to indicate when the story takes place, except that it starts on the last day of school before summer vacation. They join local boys for an innocent frolic in the Black Sea, and by the time they get home, news of their “indecency” has reached their remote village. This triggers a dynamic that escalates throughout: first, their grandmother (Nihal G. Koldas) beats the girls; then she defends them against the even more volatile threats of their uncle (Winter Sleep’s Ayberk Pekcan).

When he locks them in, and then adds ever more bars to the windows and doors, Mustang takes on fablelike qualities, with the exceptionally beautiful sisters—orphans, it turns out—resembling five Rapunzels languorously waiting to be rescued. Things turn more serious after that, and we’re reminded that almost every religion and social order is packed with justifications for keeping women locked away—and not for their own safety, either. Do these untamed horses break free? You’ll have to leave the house to find out.