Tucson native’s Girl Scouts movie opens nationwide Aug. 7

It’s an $800 million to $1 billion-plus a year business carried out by girls as young as 5. All of which fascinated filmmaker and Tucson native Alysa Nahmias.

“I could explore girlhood and capitalism and the ways that girls come of age” through the prism of selling Girl Scout cookies, Nahmias said.

“My interest was looking at the cookie sale as a kind of a microcosm of the broader culture and economy, and one that would be wildly entertaining and hilarious at times,” she said, “and also let us into some family dynamics and social dynamics that I think are worth talking about.”

On Aug. 7, Nahmias’s documentary, “Cookie Queens,” will open at some 500 movie theaters nationwide, including Harkins Tucson Spectrum 18 at 5455 S. Calle Santa Cruz and AMC Foothills 15 at Uptown, which replaces the old Foothills Mall at 7401 N. La Cholla Blvd.

“I'm so excited for people to see this movie. especially in Tucson and in Arizona where I grew up,” said Nahmias, who graduated from Catalina Foothills High School. “I feel like I can bring a story about the magic of and the challenges of childhood to communities there. It’s been really powerful.”

“Cookie Queens” follows four tenacious Girl Scouts through cookie season as they navigate their own insecurities and ambitions to sell thousands of boxes of cookies.

Twelve-year-old Olive from North Carolina has set a lofty personal goal to sell as many as 10,000 boxes.

Nikki in California is singularly focused on living up to her big sisters’ “Champion Sales” legacy and earning a family trip to Europe.

Shannon Elizabeth’s family puts their financial security at risk when they pre-order inventory that their 8-year-old is determined to sell so that she can go to summer camp. The family turns their El Paso home into a warehouse to store the hundreds of boxes of cookies.

And then there’s the precocious 5-year-old Ara, who isn’t letting her type-1 diabetes stop her as she pulls her red wagon loaded with cookies along California beaches and what she hopes will be a captive audience of buyers.

Nahmias said she did a grassroots nationwide casting call three years ago through social media and Girl Scout troop leaders to find the four girls. She also attended the 2023 Girl Scouts national convention to make connections; she returned to this year’s convention last week to screen the film.

“Cookie Queens” plays like a feature film; there are no interview segments, which are commonplace in documentary filmmaking. Instead, Nahmias, who directed the film, allowed the girls and their families to tell their stories. The camera became a fly on the wall.

“I wanted to be really immersed in the kids' worlds,” the director said, explaining that she was influenced by films like Wes Anderson's 2012 “Moonrise Kingdom” and Celine Siamese’s 2021 French fantasy “Petit Maman” as well as Sean Baker's 2017 drama “The Florida Project,” all of which “were very much centered in childhood, but also had a really complex thematic and visual world.”

“Cookie Queens,” the fourth feature documentary Nahmias directed through her Los Angeles production company Ajna Films, had its world premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was named an audience favorite. The film went on to win the coveted “audience favorite” award at the SXSW Film & TV festival in Austin, Texas, in March.

For local movie theater showtimes and tickets, visit cookiequeensfilm.com.