Some might find it odd that France’s submission to the 2016 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film is indeed a film that takes place in Northern Turkey with a Turkish cast that deals chiefly with Turkish issues. After watching it though, they will be no doubts to its quality as Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s smartly-named Mustang is a sharp, important piece of international cinema that pushes key issues of marginalized women’s rights to the forefront in a tactful but natural manner.

Initially the title confused me, seeing that the word “mustang” evoked images of majestic Spanish-descended horse or fast cars impaled with stark racing stripes. When leafing through Websters though, I found an alternative definition that cast new light on my understanding film and perhaps Ergüven’s intentions. According to the dictionary entry, a mustang can also refer to the process of “rounding up wild horses, especially in order to sell them illegally to slaughterhouses.” Anyone who’s already seen the movie will heave a deep, melancholy breathe pairing the above definition with what occurs onscreen.

Lale (played with youthful fervor by newcomer Gunes Sensoy) warns us right off the bat that we are about to witness things go to shit. Five free-spirited sisters innocuously begin their summer holiday by hitting the beach with their male classmates where they innocently conduct chicken fights in the warm waves of the Black Sea. The sun is almost blinding and their beach-bound gayeties are as carefree as as summer breeze. Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan), Ece (Elit Iscan), Selma (Tugba Sunguroglu), Nur (Doga Doguslu) and Lale have no idea of the lasting repercussions of something as banal as horsing around will be. It isn’t long before their world comes crashing down upon them. A steep price to pay for being a woman.

A peering neighbor misinterprets their playful behavior and sings reports of scandal to their exceedingly traditional but well-meaning grandmother (Nihal G. Koldas), who the girls have lived with since their parents died years ago. Before long, their overbearing uncle Erol (Ayberk Pekcan) catches wind of the developing rumor and exacerbates the situation by enforcing a barring of all “instruments of corruption.” They’re stripped of their computers, cell phones, skirts, makeup and jewelry and forced into a repertoire of endless home ec lessons. As they are groomed for wifehood, their imprisonment comes complete with barred windows and elevated walls.

Turkish-born Erguven and French screenwriter Alice Winocour have no qualms lambasting their political discontent with the sexist state of affairs in Turkey. There’s a fine line between judging a culture from the outside and from passing judgement from within its constraints that Mustang does a fantastic job of balancing. To tell this tale of female empowerment through the lens of young modern girls, confused, riddled with anxiety and chasing a sense of normalcy and liberation that has passed over their country like a causal collection of jet-setters lends it uncommon heartache and spirited narrative panache.

This all makes for a powerful experience, one that we’re planted in the midst of and forced to watch from within. Erguven blends touches of Sofia Coppola’s domestic drama The Virgin Suicides in with the high anxiety of escape films (she admits that Escape From Alcatraz was one of Mustang‘s artistic influence) because “although the story is set in a domestic framework, the dramatic register is that of a prison tale.” And though a prison’s walls are often inescapable, societal norms are even more all encompassing. It becomes clear that for the girls to flee the pathological torment of arranged marriages and archaic traditions that they must leave everything they know in the rear view.

But it’s not quite as one-sided as it may seem. Rather Erguven and Winocour find arguments that favor the prescribed lifestyles at play here. One of the sisters jettisoned into an arranged marriage finds great happiness. Others find despair. Not everyone victim to the restrictions of Turkish culture leave the table miserable. Some discover great unknown joys, while other flounder under its great weight.

The looming sense of oppression and squashed feminism makes for a harrowing watch that’s ultimately rewarded by headstrong female characters breaking boundaries where they can. With a rich, almost mythic score arranged by frequent western composer Warren Ellis (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Proposition, Lawless), Mustang amplifies its sense of institutional wrongdoing to tell a universally resonant story of breaking free.

CONCLUSION: A thoughtful portrait of caged femininity, ‘Mustang’ strongly represents Eurpoean cinema’s knack for giving life to disparate voices. France’s submission for the 2016 Oscar Best Foreign Film race is a potent, original, well-acted and all-around accomplished effort.