One ordinary night in a working-class neighborhood of the Algerian capital, a suspicious car drives along a street where several children play carelessly. The driver lures a young girl to the window and violently pulls her inside before driving away as the girl’s brother looks on in despair. The unsettling incident, inspired by real events, ignites the occasionally tense, if mostly dramatically inert social thriller “Algiers,” the country’s Oscar international feature submission, from writer-director Chakib Taleb-Bendiab.

Tensions are already running high in this town due to water shortages (as a radio announcement informs), and the knowledge that a predator is roaming around adds fuel to the fire with irate local men trying to find the culprit on their own. The official investigation faces its own obstacles, as inspector Sami Sadoudi (Nabil Asli) clashes with Dr. Dounia Assam (Meriem Medjkane), a psychiatrist who specializes in post-traumatic disorders. Their disparate...