The official Girl Scouts of America website identifies Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low as the individual responsible for creating the organization in 1912 in Savannah, Georgia, and to whom all the troops worldwide are connected. While all the efforts of the organization are directed toward empowering their members in a variety of ways to help them become the best versions of themselves, to those of us on the outside, they are the peddlers of treats that come out for only seven weeks out of the year — that’s right, Girl Scout Cookies. They’ve got your Thin Mints, Trefoils, Tagalongs, and Samoas, while introducing new flavor types like Adventurefuls, Carmel Chocolate Chip, and Exploremores. In her documentary Cookie Queens, having its world premiere in the Family Matinee section of Sundance Film Festival 2026, filmmaker Alysa Nahmias (Unfinished Spaces) centers four Girl Scouts through their cookie season, highlighting the various challenges each must face (and hopefully overcome) in their quest to sell their lot. Charming and sweet without being saccharine, Cookie Queens is a surprisingly eye-opening experience as the curtain is pulled-back on a period that so many find delightful without realizing the toll it takes on the young sellers.
A still from COOKIE QUEENS by Alysa Nahmias, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Across roughly seven weeks, Nahmias imbeds audiences with four Girl Scouts from different locations within the United States: Ara, Olive, Nikki, and Shannon Elizabeth. Ranging in ages starting at 5 years old, each one invites a different perspective on the Girl Scout experience as their respective age brings with it different challenges. There’s the inexperienced Ara, the youngest, whose set goal to sell 55 boxes is a big deal for the blue-vested scout with her parents equally aiding her with tools and support to go where she needs to in order to find customers. Then there’s the record-breaker, Olive, whose personal record of 8,000+ boxes looms over her as she tries to balance reasonable goals and personal responsibilities against internalized pressures to goal bust again. With each of these stories, a version of Girl Scouts comes into focus that audiences might not have considered as we observe the hope and concerns of scout and parent-alike grapple with the tension of Cookie Season.
Nahmias’s work is by no means investigative, so if you’re coming to this hoping for or expecting background on the organization and how it operates, you’re out of luck. Speaking as the youngest son of three boys with two sons and no local nieces in the organization, this reviewer understands very little about how Girl Scouts of America operates and, I’m ashamed to say, I learned via the introduction of Shannon Elizabeth that Brownies are, in fact, a subset of Girl Scouts and *not* their own organization. Instead, Cookie Queens is narrowly focused on how the period leading up to and through Cookie Season is approached by the subjects of the film. The obvious piece of this is that just about everyone is aware of Cookie Season given it first began in 1917 with the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, so there’s little need to do a great deal of setup on this particular aspect. As audiences with that surface-level awareness, we’re able to understand why each of the subjects posts up at different locations, why they approach selling the way they do, and how each subject seeks to make their approach universally accessible while also being unique (a truly difficult balance to strike). With this collective knowledge in-hand, Nahmias is able to skip over a great deal of explanations in favor of focusing on the point of the film, which is how the subjects handle Cookie Season and that’s where the surprises come in.
This brings us to the eye-opening part of Girl Scout culture. Merely by being present, Nahmias captures regular conversations that most non-scout individuals wouldn’t about know regarding the task that scouts undertake and the absolute burden that it is. Folks are aware that boxes, now roughly $6 each, contain adjusted cookies that appear smaller in size (based on memory) and number than before; but are they aware of how little each troop receives per box sold? Are they aware that each member must pay for the number of boxes for their goal when the cookies are first received, committing the adult(s) of the scout to the hard sell of each box through each of those seven weeks through a sizable, personal financial lift? Though the financial aspect is only really addressed via Shannon Elizabeth’s inclusion, it is no less a proper anxiety as, psychologically, each scout assumes the responsibility of the promissory note, which means that the fun and games of being a scout comes with a psychological test in which their respective identities become hard latched onto whether or not they are able to make sales. They aren’t out at your local markets, grocery stores, events, and walking your neighborhoods just to raise $1 per box for their troop, they are out there to ensure that their parents don’t have to take a loan out on their mortgage to ensure that Big Girl Scout doesn’t come after them for unsold goods/unpaid bills. This awareness creates a rising tension throughout the viewing experience as we wait and observe the ways in which each of the subjects handles the immediate highs of success in the early parts of Cookie Season before the waning begins as most folks either have their cookies or have had enough during the mid/later weeks. For the portions with Ava, this aspect isn’t particularly critical and so the film focuses more on just what the experience is like for her and the various ways in which she tackles problems from her specific young-and-innocent perspective that’ll have you welling up, perhaps even growing verklempt. By contrast, there’s Olive, whose depth of experience after seven years in the scouts expresses itself through persistent questioning of self, struggles with burnout, and a deep desire to improve even at the risk of losing her brief window for play in favor of defeating personal selling bests. As much as we start to wonder what the girls get from their Scout experience with Nikki and Shannon Elizabeth, it’s the time with Olive that makes one question the whole of Girl Scouts through the operation of Cookie Season.
Perhaps this ultimately highlights a weakness on the part of the documentary as it doesn’t offer much history on the organization past the photo montage at the start of the film or what the organization offers to uplift its members the rest of the year, but the portion with Olive really does make one wonder if Girl Scouts isn’t a pyramid scheme with an excellent PR department. Folks are unreasonably excited for Cookie Season each year (I used to be myself until (a) the version of the S’mores cookie I liked best stopped being sold in my region and (b) then discontinued entirely) with the joy that certain cookies bring, but Cookie Queens via Olive showcases the undo pressure that the operation places on its members as the individuals members sell roughly $800 million worth of cookies each year. For most of these troops, their efforts result in individual prizes to be earned (ranging from bandanas to Girl Scout camp to European vacations), as well as $1 per box sold earned by the troop itself. Through Olive’s portion, we see someone question why the troops earn so little given their large contribution (they are the foot soldiers selling the product) and begin to wrestle with the reason they sell at all. Considering that the Nikki storyline is mostly about her respective family and its involvement in the Scouts and Shannon Elizabeth’s offering a glimpse into the parental struggles that are often unthought of regarding Cookie Season, it’s fascinating that we learn how a top seller views their contributions as akin to improperly paid labor, something that one wouldn’t expect a 12-year-old to realize and what such a realization might mean for the long term. With Olive being introduced first as the person explaining to a group of Blue Vests what Cookie Season is and the importance of upselling, amid the cute and adorable moments that come from seeing these four subjects of various ages engage in a personal journey of growth, Nahmias seems to want to be sure the audience understands that the intersection of childhood and ambition comes at a hefty cost.
Alysa Nahmias, director of COOKIE QUEENS, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg.
Through Antonio Cisneros’s (Mickey: The Story of a Mouse) cinematography which makes the four young leads heroic; Kim Roberts (Food, Inc.) and Jeanne Applegate’s (God’s Creatures) editing which not only keeps things moving but does so with a wonderful energy; and a supportive collection of songs that not only captures the youthful vigor of the subjects but infuses the documentary with it, Alysa Nahmias succeeds in keeping the tone appropriately light even when asking big questions about the organization and the participants within it. Impressively, where some docs seem intent on telling you something, driving you to a conclusion they themselves present, Nahmias’s off-hand approach of not filling in gaps, of not informing us of comprehensive aspects of the organization ends up causing us to reconsider what we think we know about Cookie Season and whether or not it’s time to put down the cookie order sheet and pick up a protest placard. (But, also, Olive is selling again and you can support her here.)
Screening during Sundance Film Festival 2026.
For more information, head either to the official Cookie Queens Sundance Film Festival webpage or film website.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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