At the beginning of every year, Girl Scout Cookie season arrives, along with the chance to stock up on Thin Mints, Trefoils and more. Unknown to most buyers, however, is the emotional journey, perseverance and financial politics behind each girl’s sale.
“Cookie Queens” looks to address this lack of awareness from cookie customers by bringing the cookie-selling journey to the big screen. An exploration of girlhood that also brings insight into the pressure and competition that comes with the season, it’s a charming documentary unlike any other.
Director Alysa Nahmias followed four Girl Scouts across the country during the cookie-selling season, and footage was beautifully captured by director of photography Antonio Cisneros in a style reminiscent of “The Florida Project” (2017).
Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.
The documentary, first screened at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, opens with a fun montage of archival and modern footage of Girl Scouts. It then introduces the audience to the four girls whose journeys are documented in the film: We meet 12-year-old Olive from Charlotte, North Carolina; 8-year-old Shannon Elizabeth from El Paso, Texas; 9-year-old Nikki from Chino, California; and 5-year-old Ara from San Diego, California.
A diverse group of girls with unique experiences, they have ambitious sales goals for themselves.
Right away, the documentary is exciting and fresh in its method of approaching the uniquely American phenomenon of Girl Scout cookie sales from the perspective of the girls themselves.
Viewers learn about the girls’ personal motivations, including the pressure Olive feels to support her troop as their star seller, and how Shannon Elizabeth desperately wants to sell enough boxes to win a trip to Girl Scout camp. Nikki hopes to be like her older sisters, and win a trophy for selling the most cookies in the city of Chino, while Ara navigates the sometimes disheartening experience of being a salesperson while also managing her diabetes.
The girls are hysterical, and some parts of the documentary feel like they’re scripted straight out of a comedy show. Olive is very witty, describing the program as “technically child labor” at one point. There’s a hilarious montage of Ara taking up Pilates, hoping to become strong enough to pull a wagon full of cookies. Cisneros does a fantastic job bringing the camera down to the girls’ viewpoints, engagingly capturing each girl’s perspective.
The documentary is a remarkable display of how unintentionally funny young girls can be. Nahmias herself noted the motivation behind capturing their candid senses of humor during a Q&A at a special screening at USC on Sept. 30.
“Often, young women are portrayed in the media as one-dimensional, as either at risk or go-getters, and I wanted these girls to be able to be both,” Nahmias said.
The audience also gets insight into some struggles the scouts have, namely the pressure they feel to reach their selling quotas. While the girls enjoy selling and developing their business skills, the film raises questions about the deeply capitalistic nature of the program, and whether it is fair to make young girls work so much to sell the organization’s merchandise for arguably little profit.
Olive, for example, is upset that Girl Scouts receive less than 20% of seven dollars each box is sold for and decides to try to fight this. However, the documentary doesn’t explore this idea much deeper with greater research or context. Instead, it takes on a purely observational view, a creative decision by the director that allowed for the real charm of the girls to shine, but also left some deeper questions unanswered.
The emotional ups and downs of the selling journey and its effects on the girls are instead showcased. There’s one heartbreaking scene of Ara approaching strangers in the hopes of making sales, but sadly getting rejected. Ultimately, the girls grow and learn from their experiences, and it’s adorably inspiring that they stay totally enthusiastic and confident in themselves despite the rejection, pressure and hard work that is inevitable in sales.
The girls are such special individuals that the 91-minute runtime feels somewhat limiting for telling each of the four girls’ full stories. Despite small, compelling glimpses of more personal aspects of their backgrounds and journeys, including Ara’s experience with childhood diabetes and Nikki’s mom’s feelings about never having been a Girl Scout herself, these topics are only brushed over.
Although the film’s general lack of depth leaves something to be desired, it is also a trademark of the film’s purely observational style. Viewers are left to make some of these connections themselves, and the film comes to an impactful close despite it all.
Nahmias noted at the Q&A that the film is “a commentary on capitalism and consumerism, and yet at the end, when they reach their goals or exceed their goals, [she is] choking up … it’s so much more meaningful than the consumerism.”
It’s true that the ending, despite it all, is emotional, as each girl reaches not only their sales goals, but their personal hopes as well. Olive breaks her sales record and joins a Girl Scout advisory council, still dreaming of increasing the profits earned by Girl Scouts. Shannon Elizabeth gets to go to camp, Nikki finally gets a Cookie Queen trophy and Ara learns the art of sales, designing her own diabetes-friendly cookie while she’s at it.
“Cookie Queens” is refreshing for its unique representation of young girls learning leadership and persistence while being their incredible, authentic selves.