‘Cookie Queens’: Cutest Documentary You’ll See All Year

Girl Scout cookie selling teaches leadership, builds confidence, and fosters community. For all intents and purposes, cookie season is a true rite of passage.

Olive G. (center) gives instruction in sales to a group of young Daisy Girl Scouts in "Cookie Queens." Roadside Attractions

Unrated | 1h 31m | Documentary, Children | 2026

“Cookie Queens” is a delightful, humorous, cuteness-overload documentary that tells the stories of four young Girl Scouts, ages 5 to 12—Ara, Shannon Elizabeth, Nikki, and Olive—and their families. The girls hail from various states across America. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are the movie’s executive producers.

While “Cookie Queens” is a complex look at how America puts pressure on kids to be successful, it’s also unquestionably a love letter to Girl Scouts, the magic of girlhood, and the families who support their daughters’ dreams. It’s one of the most childhood-nostalgia inducing films I’ve seen in a while.

Mind Boggling

The sales numbers will blow your mind—every cookie season, Girl Scouts sell around 250 million boxes of cookies. The cookie sales—after six weeks—totaled $800 million. Considering those numbers, it should come as no surprise that Girl Scout cookie-selling is far more than a month-and-a-half commitment—it’s an all-consuming lifestyle.

Filmmaker Alysa Nahmias’s cozy but informative documentary doubles as a coming-of-age story. While it’s certainly a tale about Thin Mints, Samoas, Tagalongs, Do-si-dos, Trefoils, and Adventurefuls, it’s more about sisterhood, ambition, and expectations (self-generated and parental).

Promotional poster for "Cookie Queens." Roadside Attractions

Pressure

As an American male with no daughters, I’m sure I’m not alone in my heretofore peripherally idealistic and simplistic notion that the organization is all about yummy cookies and little-girl sisterhood. “Cookie Queens” reveals that what’s actually going on behind the Girl Scout badges and cookie boxes in the townships and hamlets across our fine nation—is actually a high-pressure operation.

Young girls are learning the fundamentals of capitalism, commercialism, and consumerism. They’re learning to use scale-ambition business strategy statements, cutting-edge sales techniques, marketing, and entrepreneurship. It’s “ABC” (Always Be Closing) type stuff. One girl’s got a marketing campaign using custom websites, professional signs, and marketing videos filmed by her dad that would make a corporate sales team proud.

Is that much sales savvy healthy at that age? What does it say about these girls? What does it say about American culture? It certainly underscores the hoary aphorism coined by President Calvin Coolidge: “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.”

Meet the Contestants

Twelve-year-old Olive, from Charlotte, North Carolina is her troop’s top seller. She holds the regional council’s record for most boxes sold in a single season: 8,745. She’s a jaw-droppingly precocious and uncommonly ambitious child. What does Olive want to be when she grows up? A Supreme Court Justice. Well alrighty then.

Olive G. (left) and her best friend, fellow Troop 219 member and support buddy Celia K. taste-test the product in "Cookie Queens." Roadside Attractions

Olive’s cookie-selling ain’t no hobby—it’s a full-time business. A 16-wheeler semi-truck delivering 12,000 boxes of cookies (12,000!) to her doorstep puts the exclamation point on just how serious Olive is about cookie-selling.

Her selling zealotry also appears to be a bit of an obsession. Olive’s mother also appears to be a bit of an Americanized, more passive-aggressive version of a Chinese “Tiger mom.” Towards the end, mother and daughter have an amusing, mildly tearful heart-to-heart about where, exactly, the wellspring of this overabundant ambition lies. There are halfhearted attempts by both parties to finger-point and eschew accountability, but it’s clear that deep down, each one knows, that the other one knows—the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, and they’re both equally complicit. One wonders whose idea becoming a Supreme Court Justice was, originally—that’s not generally the first thing that pops into a little girl’s mind when contemplating her future.

We get to see the pressures not just on Olive but also on the other girls profiled. Nine-year-old Nikki, in Chino, California, idolizes her two glamorous older sisters, Nala and Nyah, who not only won trophies with their cookie money, but also trips to Europe. When Nikki eventually wins her own trophy, where does it go? It goes in the bed, to snuggle up with, and never let out of her sight, like we all used to do with our favorite Christmas toys.

Nikki B. finally wins a trophy for outstanding cookie sales in "Cookie Queens." Roadside Attractions

Eight-year-old Shannon Elizabeth lives in El Paso. Her mom, Amanda (also a troop co-leader), and Amanda’s partner, Juan, are enthusiastic allies in her cookie-selling mission. Shannon Elizabeth’s goal is simple: sell enough cookies to attend Girl Scouts summer camp for free.

With Latino and Native American roots, she’s got two passions: karate and Girl Scouts. It’s delightful to see her sensei build her confidence to the point where she surprises herself by eventually being able to karate-chop a board in half.

Shannon Elizabeth S. being facilitated by her mother, Amanda, in her Girl Scouts-to-Brownies graduation ritual, in "Cookie Queens." Roadside Attractions

Ara, the chipmunk-cheeked, “Peanuts”-like 5-year-old from San Diego steals the show throughout. She’s grown as a cookie seller since her first year, when she sold five boxes. In her second year, she’s set an ambitious goal: 55 boxes!

Because Ara has type-1 diabetes, she can’t really sample the Girl Scout product, which inspires her to make her own sugar-free cookies. She’s a natural-born, tiny salesperson with excellent money management and marketing skills. She does Pilates so as to be able to haul her red cookie wagon more easily along the sandy beach. She diligently practices a “Well-Tempered Clavier” piano piece by Bach to play at the local market to help beef up her sales. As she points out to passers-by—“I also have cookies! Um ... they’re not for free.”

Spunky 5-year-old Ara E. takes a sales call in "Cookie Queens." Roadside Attractions

Why are there are no sugar-free Girl Scout cookies? Science has proven that refined white sugar is eight times more addictive than cocaine. One can only assume the Girl Scout organization is very aware of the highly addictive nature of its product. Which by definition turns all its little salesgirls into de facto, early-onset drug-dealers.

Let’s maybe not think too deeply on that one.

The Bottom Line

“Cookie Queens” doesn’t hold back on documenting the time and sacrifices families make for during selling season—long hours, weekends working at booths, enduring standing out in the cold, after-dinner sales-strategy sessions, and money spent on ads and inventory. These girls work like sled-dogs and have, in the process, acquired highly impressive business skills.

The documentary also quietly questions who really benefits most from this work. The Girl Scouts organization is the main beneficiary of an $800 million industry that is built on the charm of children and the sacrifices of families. The movie is honest about this, without being judgmental. It doesn’t have to be. As wise-beyond-her-years Olive matter-of-factly points out—“It’s basically child labor.”

“Cookie Queens” reminds us that we are watching future leaders grow up. These are people who could become Supreme Court justices, entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 CEOs, shot-callers, and movers-and-shakers, who learned early on that hard work, strategic thinking, and family support can help them do great things.

However, all of the above—it must be said—does, in fact, rest on a feminist paradigm. More and more, lately, career-track women who took the traditionally male career trajectory, are looking back and ruing the fact that by trying to have it all, they lost the chance to raise children. I wonder if Girl Scout cookie sellers, like actors who become professionals early on, rue the fact that they missed out on certain aspects of childhood.

All in all though, the message is positive. We see parents going all out to support their daughters’ goals. Olive’s parents plan and help her pull off a record-breaking campaign (12,801 boxes sold!). The girls’ families give up their free time because they believe in their daughters’ potential. They see Girl Scout cookie selling as a way to teach leadership, build confidence, and connect with the community. For all intents and purposes, cookie season is a bona fide rite of passage.

“Cookie Queens is a celebration of the magic that happens when little girls are given support and the space to dream big, work hard, and discover just how much they’re capable of.

The business of America is also excellence.

Promotional poster for "Cookie Queens." Roadside Attractions

‘Cookie Queens’ Director: Alysa Nahmias Documentary MPAA Rating: G Running Time: 1 hours, 31 minutes Release Date: Aug. 7, 2026 Rating: 4 stars out of 5

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