“Cookie Queens” is an adorable Girl Scouts documentary made with surprising honesty and more than a little bite. It puts some hard truths in the figurative mouths of babes, sneaking them in with a spoonful of sugar rather than a sledgehammer. Director Alysa Nahmias follows four Girl Scouts of various ages during the six-week cookie season in their hometowns of San Diego, Calif.; Chino, Calif.; El Paso, Texas; and Charlotte, N.C. The trials and tribulations of this diverse crew of cookie capitalists played very well at IFFBoston earlier this year. Now you can experience the fun we had watching it.

Assisted by a colorful onscreen box detailing how far each girl has left to reach her sales goal, Nahmias generates the requisite suspense as we root for their success. However, “Cookie Queens” is not a chronicle of wins and losses, or a series of empty and manipulative stand up and cheer moments. The film’s strength is in the personal dramas of its protagonists: Ara, Shannon Elizabeth, Nikki, and Olive. We see their interactions with friends and family, and hear their dreams and life goals. Their stories are as compelling as they are heartwarming.

Ara in “Cookie Queens.”Roadside Attractions

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That isn’t to say that you won’t have a favorite salesperson to root for during the film’s brisk 91-minute runtime. Though I wanted everyone to reach their goals, I was most hopeful for bespectacled 5-year old Ara from San Diego. Unlike the other, older subjects, she only has to sell 55 boxes of cookies, though she ups it to 60 so she can win a prized bandana. Ara makes sales videos where she plays a keytar while singing a sales pitch. She also plays classical pieces on the piano to drum up business in the neighborhood.

Ara takes Pilates classes to help her pull her cookie wagon by herself. There are some wonderful wide shots of her pulling that wagon across the screen; the framing makes the distance look insurmountable. Ara is also diabetic, which means she can only eat a little bit of her product at a time. Apparently, there are no sugar-free Girl Scout cookies, but Ara has ideas about changing that.

Also in California is 9-year old Nikki, the latest in a family of successful Girl Scout cookie mavens. Her two older sisters, Nala and Naya, previously sold the most cookies in Chino. Nikki wants a trophy like the one her older sisters won, and she also wants to earn the same trip to Europe that they did. Nikki’s relationship with Nala is a lovely depiction of a sisterly bond, and Nahmias includes several conversations between them.

Nikki in “Cookie Queens.”Roadside Attractions

Over dinner during the first week of the season, Nikki’s mother gives her daughters the kinder, gentler version of Alec Baldwin’s speech from “Glengarry Glen Ross.” When they’re not doing schoolwork or activities, they should always be selling. Like so many sports parents, Nikki’s mother pulled her daughters into Girl Scouts to live out her own childhood dreams of failed glory (she wasn’t allowed to join). You’ll definitely have thoughts about the parents in “Cookie Queens,” but Nahmias’s light touch and unobtrusive observation let you draw your own conclusions.

Over in El Paso, martial artist in training Shannon Elizabeth wants to up this year’s goal to 2,500 from last year’s total of 1,759 boxes. Her goal is to finally sell enough so she can go to the expensive camp she’s always wanted to attend. Her parents really want her to make her dream come true, so they invest in the required amount of inventory. “There’s a mortgage payment of cookies in my house right now,” explains Shannon Elizabeth’s mother. Indeed, the number of boxes of cookies in each girl’s home is so massive they can make forts out of them.

Shannon Elizabeth in “Cookie Queens.”Roadside Attractions

Shannon Elizabeth’s father points out that, if they don’t sell every box, they’ll have to pay for the unsold cookies. He jokes about having his knees broken by enforcers from the Girl Scouts organization, but “Cookie Queens” doesn’t sugarcoat the potential downside of peddling Thin Mints and Samoas.

Last but not least is 12-year-old cookie selling vet Olive from Charlotte. For the past seven years, she’s been doling out Do-Si-Dos and Trefoils to record-breaking effect. She’s a local news item regular, and she’s made $200,000 for the Girl Scouts alone. Olive is a go-getter who wants to be a Supreme Court justice. She’s also the most vocal about her pushy parents, leading to some heartfelt discussions about her exhaustion and her motivations.

It’s Olive who says the one thing we’ve all thought about Girl Scout cookie season: “It’s technically child labor,” Olive boldly notes to her fellow Scout and best friend. “But we signed up for this.” Olive also realizes that she and the other girls are only making $1.10 in proceeds for their troop off of a $6 box of cookies. Meanwhile, the Girl Scouts make $800 million off of those sales. That simply will not stand!

When a movie this sweet ends with one of its heroes becoming radicalized against an unfair system, you know you’re dealing with a sharper movie than you anticipated. That sharpness is what makes “Cookie Queens” as irresistible as those addictive cookies.

★★★½

COOKIE QUEENS

Written and directed by Alysa Nahmias. At Coolidge Corner, AMC Boston Common, suburbs. 91 minutes. G (yes, the G rating still exists)

Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe’s film critic.