In Germany’s official Oscar entry, a young middle school teacher finds herself at the center of an expanding web of anger and suspicion.

At the large, modern school where the contentious events of The Teachers’ Lounge unfurl, Carla Nowak is the newbie instructor, fresh-faced and eager. By the end of the film, she’s more chastened and anxious than bursting with gung-ho spirit — which is not to say she’s been defeated by the insanity around her. But she has learned a thing or two about the absurdity of organizational politics in the digital age of the antisocial socials, laid bare in İlker Çatak’s pointed yet never simplistic drama.

Germany’s submission to the Academy Awards had a strong showing at the Berlin festival and went on to win five trophies at the German Film Awards, including the top prize and the best actress nod for Leonie Benesch, best known to international audiences for her turn as a teenage nanny in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon. Here, as a smart young woman whose impulsive quest for truth ignites a firestorm of accusations, she taps into a gripping combination of idealism, naiveté, vulnerability and fury.

The crime at hand is a series of thefts — cash, classroom supplies — that a few members of the faculty have made it their mission to solve. During the meeting with the two class representatives, the snide Lukas (Oscar Zickur) and earnest Jenny (Antonia Küpper), teacher Thomas Liebenwerda (Michael Klammer) is not just insistent about the naming of names but a master manipulator. Before placing a list of suspects before the seventh-graders, he smoothly commands them to “put yourself in the victims’ shoes.” In one form or another, we’ve all heard that one before.

And then there’s the classic “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear,” which principal Bettina Böhm (Anne-Kathrin Gummich) intones when she and teacher Milosz Dudek (Rafael Stachoviak) demand to inspect the wallets of all the boys in Carla’s classroom. This leads to accusations against Ali (Can Rodenbostel) that his understandably outraged parents put to rest. But as Carla will learn the hard way, allegations of wrongdoing have a considerable half-life.

It’s in the movie’s title setting (Das Lehrerzimmer) that the sharp screenplay by director Çatak and Johannes Duncker kicks into high gear with a bit of low-tech surveillance. There’s nothing relaxed or relaxing about the lounge where teachers spend their time between classes. There, Thomas and his fellow buttinsky Vanessa König (Sarah Bauerett) push the case for meting out punishment to the still unidentified thief, and endlessly stir the winds of war. “We need to act,” Thomas insists.

After finding out why his mother stormed out of work, Oskar proves an ardent defender of her honor, and demands that Leonie apologize publicly. News spreads through the classrooms, corridors and, yes, the dreaded lounge, the spaces and their interconnectedness expertly investigated by cinematographer Judith Kaufmann (Corsage, My Wonderful Wanda), working in the 4:3 aspect ratio — the squarish frame reinforcing the notion of a narrowed stand-in for the wider world. Particularly striking is the sequence in which Carla watches, from an upper-floor classroom window, as Oskar moves from group to group in the schoolyard, gathering support against his mother’s accuser.

But while Thomas and Vanessa gleefully turn their heat-seeking sights on Ms. Kuhn, Carla would happily undo the chain reaction she inadvertently fueled. Marvin Miller’s excellent score accentuates the creeping sense of dread and the emotional unraveling, the notes’ discordancy jabbing like overworked nerves. A disastrous parent-teacher conference prompts a panic attack for Carla, but even on a good day she’s facing a group of feisty 12-year-olds. Some haven’t the slightest remorse when they’re caught cheating (Vincent Stachowiak) or skipping class (Padmé Hamdemir, Lisa Marie Trense), and some clamor for test results to be posted in order to enshrine the academic pecking order — and their own success.

As the kids close ranks against Carla and the staff of the school paper wields a particularly dishonest form of gotcha journalism under the guide of righteousness, the school’s guidance counselor (Kathrin Wehlisch) offers reason and sympathy, moments of refuge from the dangerously charged atmosphere.