Rochel (Zoe Lister-Jones) is an Orthodox Jew. Nasira (Francis Benhamou) is a Syrian-American Muslim. When the two unwed, rookie public school teachers meet in “Arranged,” a new film by Stefan Schaefer and Diane Crespo that opens Friday at the Quad, they discover that they have three things in common: 1) The enforced modesty that their respective religions require rattles their more worldly colleagues; 2) They are both expected to become wives in arranged marriages, and 3) Each of their respective communities hates the other.

Pretty and intellectually uncompromising, Rochel would be a dream come true for any bachelor — good provider or not. But what makes her a potential catch also makes her a challenge for the local shadchen, a matchmaker her parents have engaged to find their daughter a suitable husband in the old neighborhood way. “Put your best foot forward and see what the chemistry’s like,” the shadchen tells her. On a series of arranged coffee dates, Rochel learns the same thing New York singles from every background have found out: The city’s dating ranks are full of self-absorbed egomaniacs and pathologically shy duds.

As prospect after prospect proves too socially arrested to merit a callback, Rochel’s subtly overbearing mother, Sheli (Mimi Lieber), takes off the guilt gloves. Furious at her mother’s lack of empathy and with own her faith shaken, Rochel pays a call on her worldly cousin and gets a taste of mainstream courtship bitter enough to send her back to Ditmas Park for another round of old-country dating.

Meanwhile, Nasira’s matchmaker is her father, Abdul-Halim (Laith Nakli), a former Koran scholar who has become a gas station owner since immigrating to Brooklyn. Despite an initially rocky start, father and daughter eventually come to an understanding and Mr. Right, in the form of a Muslim engineering student, soon arrives sandwiched between his parents on the living room couch.

But understanding is in short supply, it seems. Much to their embarrassment, Rochel and Nasira, already under undue scrutiny at home, become a kind of pet project for their school’s principal, Ms. Jacoby (Marcia Jean Kurtz), a Reform Jew unable to see what it is the two young women can look forward to in the traditional life paths they’ve chosen — or that have chosen them.

“Have a drink, enjoy yourself, you’re too serious,” she urges them. “We could sue her and retire at 25,” Nasira jokes when the two dumbfounded women compare notes after a particularly awkward office visit. Brought together by the equally confused ideas about prejudice forwarded by their boss, their relatives, and their fourth-grade students, the two confide about their respective marriage prospects. When Nasira becomes engaged, she takes it upon herself to fix Rochel up, even to the point of masquerading as a Sephardic Jewish bride. “Someone should be shooting a commercial for world peace,” Nasira dryly observes during an impromptu play date between younger family members the girls have in tow.

In spite of its nearly unlimited potential for public service announcement sanctimony, the winning formula in “Arranged” is the script, adapted by Mr. Schaefer from an account by Yuta Silverman, a Boro Park Orthodox wife who took the shadchen route to marriage herself. The film seeks to tell a story, not deliver a sermon. Nasira’s 11th-hour subterfuge brings situation-comedy contrivance into the mix, but for the most part “Arranged” steers clear of desperate plot mechanics and remains mercifully free of the condescending “I have no son” dinner table Sturm und Drang that hobbles many American films set in cloistered ethnic communities.

Though photographed in a lightning-fast 17 days, primarily in the filmmakers’ own houses, “Arranged” rarely feels visually or narratively compromised by its low budget and accelerated shoot. Rather than underscoring every irony with a close-up, the directors and their photographer, Dan Hersey, allow characters the space to move and stage the film’s dialogue-driven scenes in ways that cement on-screen relationships and conflicts with expedience and clarity, the stray inevitable bad-date montage notwithstanding. Ms. Lister-Jones, Ms. Benhamou, and the rest of an excellent cast of familiar New York stage and television faces connect with deftness and ease. “Old Joy” lead Daniel London is particularly winning in a small role.

“Arranged” is that rare thing — a low-budget, mainstream American independent film that sets realistic dramatic goals and attains them with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of charm. Countless movies have taken a crack at New York-style courtship. But “Arranged” maps the parallel journeys taken by Rochel and Nasira to two very different altars with unusual sensitivity and insight.