A screaming Leonie Benesch in The Teachers’ Lounge (TIFF)

Viewers may need a scorecard to keep track of all the troubles that are piled upon a new sixth-grade teacher, Carla Nowak (the cool and lucid Leonie Benesch). Her brisk walk, erect stature, and her willingness to stick her neck out, no matter how unpopular her opinion may be, attest to her self-assurance. Through the course of a seismic semester, Carla will often make thoughtful decisions. However, when she doesn’t speak up for herself and acquiesces to high-ups, the ramifications boomerang back onto her and her classroom. Worse, when she follows her heart, and not her head, it leads her into a quagmire of difficulties.

A series of robberies have hit her German public school, and the intrigue immediately begins with an interview—or an interrogation, depending on your perspective—between faculty and two representatives from Carla’s sixth-grade classroom, with the newbie teacher looking on. The students are questioned, in a juvenile version of naming names, on who they suspect is the thief. This flawed investigation sets the tense tone throughout—there will be several intense showdowns during the 98-minute running time. (Marvin Miller’s strident score of strumming strings moves the confrontations along, and is one of the year’s best.) The plot is more concerned in the ripple effects of the inquiry than in solving the mystery of the petty crimes. The ramifications of the former, as they affect students and faculty, become a tense microcosm of society at large, mixing racism with issues of class.

After receiving a tip from one of the class representatives, two faculty members barge into Carla’s classroom and order the girls to exit the room and the boys to leave their wallets on the desk and to stand back while the contents are inspected. The would-be sleuths believe they have found the thief: Ali (Can Rodenbostel), the son of Turkish Muslim migrants, on the basis that he has a significant amount of money in his billfold. In a first of many plot reversals, the charge against the sixth grader blow up in the adults’ faces: Ali’s parents gave him extra money to buy a video game.

Carla’s self-confidence, which may come across as self-righteousness, clouds her reasoning when she decides to become a youthful Miss Marple and entrap the errant thief in a manner that is illegal as well as an invasion of privacy. She also clearly hasn’t thought the consequences through when she accuses Friederike (a fiery Eva Löbau), the school’s secretary, of thievery in the teachers’ lounge, the one sacred space where the faculty can let their hair down away from students. Friederike is suspended as the school looks into the accusation, while Friederike’s son Oscar (Leonard Stettnisch), becomes his mom’s fiercest advocate, turning his classmates against their teacher, Carla. He’s her prize pupil. (The twisty storyline wouldn’t work without this coincidence.) Rebellion is now at hand. The film’s alternate title could have been: To Fräulein, with Spite.

The script layers one moral question on top of another as Carla’s tribulations escalate. When she sits down to be interviewed for the school paper, you don’t need to read the first edition to know that the interview will be a smackdown on her questionable actions. The screenplay by director Ilker Catak and Johannes Duncker stacks the deck against the unlucky and solitary Carla—who has no allies—and is so invested in boxing her in, and the film, into a corner, that the restrained resolution is a bit of a letdown. There are really no winners here, no matter how thunderous Felix Mendelssohn’s triumphant music blares on the soundtrack. The irony may pass over some viewers’ heads; for the most part, the narrative is straightforward. Nevertheless, how the film arrives at this point is nerve-racking and absorbing.

Catak’s pressure cooker drama has been chosen as Germany’s Best International Feature Oscar submission for this year. It premiered in Berlin back in February and landed at the Toronto International Film Festival after beginning its fall festival run in Telluride. It is scheduled for release later this year by Sony Pictures Classics.