Sundance Interview: “Cookie Queens” Director Alysa Nahmias

Director Alysa Nahmias (Art & Krimes by Krimes) just premiered her newest documentary, Cookie Queens, at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival (out of which I reviewed it). The film follows four girls— Olive (age 12), Nikki (9), Shannon Elizabeth (8), and Ara (5)—as they each do their best to sell Girls Scout cookies according to their preset goals. Some have high expectations, while one only wants to sell 55 (well, maybe 60 so she can earn a bandana). It’s a sweet, and also probing, look at how Girl Scouts of the USA‘s manages the process. Bought any cookies yourself over the years? Then this is the movie for you. Nahmias has also produced a number of documentaries for others, including the 2022 Wildcat, which I loved. During the fest, I spoke with her by Zoom. The interview below is a transcription of that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed: Looking at your previous credits, you have done a lot of films about the art world prior to this one. What made you want to now switch it up and make a film about selling Girl Scout Cookies?

Alysa Nahmias: So, my background is in art and architecture; I did not go to film school. I was an architect and my first film arose because I wanted to tell an extraordinary story about architecture, about the national art schools in Cuba. It looked at that architecture as a way of thinking about the Cuban Revolution and the individuals who had the utopian aspirations and who had to then deal with the institution of government as it developed, which is actually pretty relevant today in terms of art and censorship. But that idea of individuals and institutions runs through my work, both with The New Bauhaus and with Art & Krimes by Krimes, my most recent feature doc that I directed about an artist. I follow creative people, individuals who are not famous, but are making an impact; sometimes they’re even on the margins but are seeking to grapple with their identity and with their relationships to these larger structures. So that is, I think, a thread.

But then there’s also a personal reason for Cookie Queens in that my own children had seen Wildcat and Art & Krimes by Krimes. They actually couldn’t see Wildcat when it first came out, since it’s so heavy; even though the cat footage is amazing and for all audiences, there’s a deeper story that’s very much more in the adult world about mental health. And so they said, “Mom, your films are great. We like them, but can you please make a film that is for us that we really want to watch and tell our friends about for people our age?” And it would’ve been easy to just be like, “Oh yeah, maybe.” But I actually thought about it. I was like, “Wow, that is really a kind of interesting creative challenge for documentary in this moment, to make a film that for me as an artist would be fulfilling but also could reach multi-generational audiences and speak to them and be something that everyone wants to share and say, ‘You have to see this movie from a place of joy and connection.’”

My producers, Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, who were friends of mine through Sundance—I helped them with their film, The Truffle Hunters, through the Sundance Labs—and I were talking, and Michael talked about this Girl Scout whom he met at a pizza joint, who sold him a lot of cookies. And for a moment we chatted about how that’s such an interesting world, these kids who are really ambitious and sell an extreme number of cookies. I felt like in some ways I was being described, myself, as a kid who had been very ambitious, and still as a woman who is an entrepreneur, in a way. Artists are entrepreneurs, a lot of us, in that we have to try to make a living doing what we do.

I thought that would be a really interesting way in to look at girlhood and to look at how early that develops, those ideas that our appearance matters, especially as girls and women in terms of our ability to operate in the economy and the ways that we can cooperate or compete, and the social assumptions around that. And it turned out that there were these themes about identity and about self-invention for these girls. The Girl Scouts is the biggest institution they know, besides the government, obviously, but they care about it and they’re grappling with it. And I thought that was interesting and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So that’s how I know when I have to make a film.

CLR: And it really is quite an enjoyable film, and you dive into some very important issues. I love the four main subjects, the four girls, and they all have different types of ambitions, which is what makes the film especially interesting. But I’m curious, did you film initially more than those four and then whittle it down over time to the four? And then how did you end up choosing those particular four girls?

AN: So the casting process was very grassroots. My casting producer talked with hundreds of people. I interviewed dozens on Zoom, and then I visited, I think, 9 or so families and spent a few days with them just really trying to get to know them, because what I was looking for was not just kids who had high goals, because I knew right away that this was a film that wasn’t going to be a traditional competition doc. I was more interested in thinking about the concept of competition and questioning, genre-wise, that sort of sub-genre of competition doc. And so I wanted kids who had a really active inner life, with great imagination.

Sometimes I would ask them on our initial calls, if you could sell cookies anywhere in the world, real or imagined, what would it be? Where would it be and why? And they’d come up with the most extraordinary ideas right on the spot, some of them. And I wanted kids who would be open to making choices and facing challenges on camera and families that would feel comfortable with that. So we talked a lot about what it would mean to participate. And we filmed with 7 different girls, and so there are 3 others whom we filmed with and who are very near and dear to my heart, who are really part of our film team in a lot of ways. They actually have little cameos in the intro sequence.

All of the stories were strong. I kind of thought maybe partway through production that something would happen or one of the stories wouldn’t go through. Who knows? A girl gets sick during the cookie season or injured or something like that, and it doesn’t make sense to continue. But no, they were all awesome stories, and it just was a matter of which ones fit together. And to tell the richest and least redundant story, I think I knew from the beginning that this would be an ensemble story because, again, it wasn’t just about competition between them. They weren’t really competing between each other. The heart of the story is about those bigger themes around identity, around coming of age. And so each of those stories resonates with each other along that line. And the others, there were some that were just a little redundant. The girls were similar ages or grappling with similar inner journeys.

CLR: We opened this conversation before I started recording by noting all the copious physical media in the space behind me in my office. So maybe you’ll release a Blu-ray with special features, including those three extra stories.

AN: (laughs) I would love that. So would they, I’m sure.

CLR: So, I don’t know how much of an expert you feel you are about the Girl Scout cookies process now, but I have a colleague whose daughter sells me cookies every year, and I told her about this movie, and I talked about how we see these families struggling because they have to prepurchase all of the boxes, and she informed me that they don’t do that here, but it’s the troop that prepurchases. So does this vary by state? Because that really raises the stakes for some of these families. What did you learn about that in the making of the film?

AN: So there are two things there that are a little in the weeds and aren’t on screen in the film, in part just because it would require a lot of exposition. But I will share that your friend is not wrong. So at the troop level, they sign up for a certain number of cookies. But in my experience, and each troop can do this however they want to, in the troops we worked with, each family within the troop tells the troop how many they’re going to order, and then the troop places the orders. So both are true. And then the other aspect that I want to clarify is that families don’t have to give cash up front, but they are committing to selling those cookies. And then Girl Scouts debits their troop account. So you do have to keep pace and keep selling. Otherwise you’ll get debited. You don’t have to prepay, but you’re on the hook. It’s like credit. We do it when we buy a new dishwasher at Best Buy and they say, “OK, pay monthly.” But you don’t get to not pay for your dishwasher.

CLR: Thank you for that clarification. It certainly does add a lot of tension to the stories. So, back to the casting, because of course you have to cast the families, as well, and there are some remarkable moments, those conversations between Olive and her mother, in particular. And I’m just curious how you navigated some of these moments with the families, because it’s one thing to agree to be filmed, it’s another thing to have somebody there while you’re having these difficult conversations. What was that process like?

AN: It’s a long, evolving relationship, formed on consistent, frequent communication, asking consent along the way. And some of those conversations and things that happened that were more stressful for the families and vulnerable for them are happening later in the season after we’d been working with them for months, and always with them knowing. They obviously know we’re in their house; they’re letting us in their door. It’s not a thing where we can just come in anytime and turn the camera on anytime. It’s always an acknowledgement. And then that comfort level happens where in some of those scenes, it’s just my cinematographer in the room and they’re miked by my sound person in a very unobtrusive way. Sometimes I’m even outside the room, sometimes I’m in the room, but they know I’m there to hold space and to be there. But I’m always nearby.

I don’t believe that people forget about the camera. I think it’s there and people know that it’s there. And sometimes that leads to increased sharing. Sometimes it leads to more guardedness. With these families, I’m impressed by their courage and their honesty with just how they talk to each other. That’s how Olive and her mom talk to each other with or without the camera. So it wasn’t like those were unusual moments. What they say is very extraordinary sometimes, but the closeness, the ability to communicate, the self-reflection are qualities that these people have as humans and as families. That is part of why I was interested in filming with them.

CLR: I found those moments quite intriguing.

AN: I could relate to those moments as a child and as a parent. I saw myself in both Olive and Carrie, her mom, in that conversation. And the same thing with Amanda, Shannon Elizabeth’s mom, when Amanda’s crying and Shannon Elizabeth comes downstairs. I think those are moments that, if you’ve lived in a family, you’re going to feel them because they’re pretty familiar to a lot of us.

CLR: What was the most surprising thing you learned about Girl Scout cookies and the selling of them in the making of this film? Something you didn’t know going in.

AN: Oh, so many. I mean, everything was new to me. I was not a Girl Scout; my mom was. I didn’t realize how big the business is. It’s about $800 million a year, about 250 million boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I think that’s the right number. Annually, they outsell Oreos and Chips Ahoy. And when I first started, I thought, “Oh, these girls are performing; they’re rehearsing how to be salespeople.” And then right away I was like, “Oh, they’re not rehearsing. They’re doing this. They are participating in the economy in a major way.” So that was surprising to me, just how big it is and then how relatively different the amount is that the girls and the troops keep versus the organization.

I would also say that I was surprised at how many girls and women are Girl Scouts. It’s like 50 million women alive today—about one in three—and you can test it out in any circle of people, informally. I’ll ask people as I’m talking to them if they were a Girl Scout, and it’s almost always at least one in three. And so the amount of people that have been impacted, and many of them so positively by the organization, is powerful. I had no idea.

CLR: Wow! Well, thank you, Alysa for talking to me and for making the film.

AN: Thank you!

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Chris Reed is the editor of Film Festival Today. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.