Written by Sarah Walker. Photo by Sarah Walker.
Alysa Nahmias’s newest documentary “Cookie Queens” shines a trefoil-shaped spotlight on the stories behind the sales-driven Girl Scouts you might meet outside of your local grocery store.
Screened at Lucas Theatre for the 2026 SCAD Film Festival, the film follows Shannon Elizabeth, Olive, Nikki, and Ara, four tenacious Girl Scouts from various walks of life through the 2024 cookie season. Coming from a variety of scouting levels, economic backgrounds, and family dynamics, these girls represent a true split of the various relationships to cookie selling.
Nine-year-old Nikki from Chino, California is the younger sister to two older top-selling Girl Scouts. Determined to break her sister’s record of top seller in Chino, Nikki’s cookie season is full of lessons about sisterhood and growing up.
Shannon Elizabeth, an eight year old from El Paso Texas, is busy raising money during the Cookie Season to afford Girl Scout camp. Shannon Elizabeth’s storyline showcases her ties to Native American culture, love of karate, and the economic pressures that cookie-selling season often places on the backs of parents of scouts.
We see twelve-year-old Olive from Charlotte, North Carolina grapple with the difficulty of wanting to be more than just her reputation as a record breaking cookie seller, navigating the trials and tribulations of middle school, and learning how to advocate for herself and her boundaries.
The youngest of the bunch is Ara, a five-year-old diabetic from San Diego, California whose aim is to sell 55 boxes (a whopping 11x times more than the previous year). Arguably the funniest part of this documentary is Ara’s comedic timing, which is demonstrated despite frequent cookie sale rejections and had the couple sitting in front of me laughing and crying simultaneously.
Through intentional camera angle decisions, cinematographer Antonio Cisneros focused his attention to see through the eyes of the Girl Scouts themselves. Highlighting their everyday life outside of scouting, personal struggles, and friendship dynamics gave us the chance to meet these girls as fully fleshed out participants and financial contributors in one of the most recognizable youth organizations.
In a Q&A after the screening at SCAD Film Fest, Nahmias shared her motivations for choosing Girl Scouts as the subject of her next documentary. Rooted in her desire to follow well known people who are not celebrities, Nahmias wished to give these girls an opportunity to tell their stories and to see themselves represented within mainstream media. Produced independently from Girl Scouts of the USA, Nahmias does not shy from including the humor and capitalistic attitudes of cookie-selling season. There is a comedic relief that comes from hearing the girls upsell customers and go the extra mile to secure a sale.
Aware of the pressures that young girls feel to perform their best, please the people around them, and push themselves, “Cookie Queens” does not look down upon girls for their persistent ambition. Instead, it offers audiences the chance to reflect on what it means to be a young girl in America surrounded by the pressures of consumer culture. When asked how Nahmias was able to establish enough trust for these girls to open up authentically, she reminded us how used to cameras, social media, and the performance of being online is already embedded within the mindsets and expectations of young girls and children alike. For viewers, “Cookie Queens” offers non-scouts a peek into the enormity of cookie season as an opportunity to learn practical skills and also as a product of the socio-economic world in which we live.
