Five orphaned sisters imprisoned by an evil uncle: sounds like a fairy tale, but Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut feature film is set in modern Turkey. Financed in France, it’s that country’s selection for a foreign-language Oscar nomination.

After a nosy neighbor spots the girls playing on the beach with boys, they are stripped of every freedom: to attend school, read books, make phone calls, even to go in the garden.

Adolescent Lale (a spirited Günes Sensoy) narrates; she plots ways around their confinement, even as her sisters — Nur (Doga Zeynep Doguslu), Selma (Tugba Sunguroglu), Ece (Elit Iscan) and Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan) — are pressured into early marriages.

A late-movie revelation of sexual abuse seems contrived, but the film is a gripping mix of comedy, tragedy, political anger and, despite everything, hope.