\u201cAlthough I wasn\u2019t a Girl Scout, I know what it\u2019s like to be ambitious as a girl and as a woman in this world.\u201d
\n![\"Alysa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Cookie_Queens-Director_Alysa_Nahmias-300x400.webp.webp\")
Alysa Nahmias, director of Cookie Queens, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film
Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg.<\/p>\n
Cookie Queens centers on four young Girl Scouts \u2014 Ara, Olive, Nikki and Shannon Elizabeth \u2014 as they plunge into the whirlwind of the annual cookie sale, a short but intense stretch that fuels a massive multimillion-dollar enterprise. The documentary stays close to the girls and their families as they set targets, face off with rivals and wrestle with the pride, pressure and vulnerability that come with wanting to succeed so early in life. \u201cAlthough I wasn\u2019t a Girl Scout, I know what it\u2019s like to be ambitious as a girl and as a woman in this world,\u201d Nahmias says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s a documentary filmmaker known for intimate, character-driven nonfiction stories. Nahmias is the founder of Ajna Films<\/a> and first gained major recognition with Unfinished Spaces<\/a> (2011), which won an Independent Spirit Award. When a conversation with one of her\u00a0 researchers turned to the subject of a particularly aggressive young cookie seller, it sparked Nahmias\u2019s imagination. In cookie season, she saw a microcosm of modern girlhood: a place where confidence, imagination, pressure, play and performance all collide. \u201cI was interested in creating a more nuanced and three-dimensional representation of girlhood, and what it means to come of age today,\u201d Nahmias says.<\/p>\n Finding the right girls to anchor the film was less about sales numbers and more about emotional openness. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really go after a particular girl,\u201d Nahmias says. \u201cWe started more grassroots, putting out information on moms groups, Girl Scout groups, social media, community groups, schools, and we fielded a lot of people who were interested.\u201d What she looked for instead was internal life. \u201cI was interested not just in external sales goals and accomplishments, but also the girls\u2019 ability to self-reflect, the way they would make choices, their incredible imaginations and their ability to both play and take things seriously,\u201d Nahmias explains.<\/p>\n \u201cI was interested in creating a more nuanced and three-dimensional representation of girlhood, and what it means to come of age today.\u201d<\/p>\n Their families mattered, too \u2014 backgrounds that would bring texture, contrast and complexity to the film\u2019s world. That balance is especially visible in five-year-old Ara, one of the documentary\u2019s most quietly arresting presences. \u201cOften girls are portrayed as very sweet and innocent, or like they grow up too fast and are very adult, \u201c Nahmias says. \u201cBut I wanted to show that these girls are both.\u201d Ara can talk strategy and money one moment and then, the next, still eat from toddler plates and play with her elephant. \u201cThat\u2019s much truer to the experience of girls,\u201d Nahmias says, \u201cespecially in those tween years, when sometimes you feel like a little girl and sometimes you want to be a big girl.\u201d For Nahmias, Ara\u2019s maturity isn\u2019t a loss of childhood but a reflection of reality. \u201cThey\u2019re not just practicing to participate in the economy,\u201d Nahmias notes. \u201cThey are participating in it.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, documentary truth is always shaped by presence, and Nahmias is frank about the camera\u2019s role in what we see. \u201cThere is an awareness \u2014 you\u2019re not unaware that the camera is there,\u201d Nahmias says. Filming over weeks and months, the crew became a familiar part of each household\u2019s rhythm, present for the highs and the crashes of the season. \u201cWe had really been through with them to a large extent,\u201d Nahmias says, and that closeness is what allows moments to feel lived-in rather than staged. She resists the idea that cameras inhibit honesty. \u201cOn the flip side of people feeling like they\u2019re not gonna say everything with the camera there, there\u2019s also sometimes a way in which they might feel more inclined to share something,\u201d Nahmias says. For her, the goal isn\u2019t invisibility but resonance. \u201cWhat we see is something that allows others to feel and project their own experience onto what\u2019s happening on screen,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s really magic for me \u2014 when people bring their own experiences and emotions and questions.\u201d<\/p>\n That openness is what gives Cookie Queens its unexpected emotional pull. The film is about learning how to want something, how to compete without losing yourself and how to perform confidence when you\u2019re still figuring out who you are. It\u2019s about families, too \u2014 the way parents support, push, hover and sometimes step back. In Nahmias\u2019s hands, cookie booths become stages where modern girlhood is rehearsed in real time.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s really magic for me \u2014 when people bring their own experiences and emotions and questions.\u201d<\/p>\n And after months immersed in this world, did she develop a cookie allegiance? She laughs. \u201cThe sleeper hit for me when filming this movie was the Lemonades,\u201d she admits, though she\u2019s quick to add, \u201cThin Mints are a very close second.\u201d<\/p>\n Like the cookies themselves, Cookie Queens turns out to be deceptively simple at first glance, only to reveal layers of sweetness, bitterness, ambition and joy the longer you sit with it. It\u2019s a film born from a mother\u2019s challenge, shaped by a director\u2019s curiosity and carried by four girls who are already learning how big the world can be.<\/p>\n