An audience saw “Cookie Queens” for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival’s Salt Lake City premiere Saturday alongside the four tenacious Girl Scouts featured in the documentary.
The screening was kicked off with a color guard from local Girl Scouts. Local leaders and Amy Redford, Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford’s daughter, then reflected on the festival and Robert Redford’s legacy.
“Dad wrote the founding principles of this organization on a single piece of paper, and it has implicated us to always lead with what the storytellers need,” Amy Redford said. “That agility is why that work is still happening 40 years later.”
“Cookie Queens” was selected to be specially featured at the festival as it exemplifies a Sundance success story.
Director Alysa Nahmias said the Sundance Institute has been a “major supporter” of her as an artist over the years through fellowships and labs. Her first documentary, “Unfinished Spaces,” was programmed at the institute’s Film Forward cultural exchange program in 2012.
Robert Redford saw “Unfinished Spaces” and wrote a positive note to Nahmias.
“That was a transformative moment for my career, both that festival experience and the note of confidence from Mr. Redford, who wrote to this unknown young filmmaker,” she said.
She said that’s why premiering “Cookie Queens” at Sundance this year is a special honor.
Sundance Film Festival director Eugene Hernandez also said of the tens of thousands of films surveyed during the selection, “Cookie Queens” was an immediate, unanimous “yes.”
The documentary follows four Girl Scouts aged five through 12 as they navigate a cookie-selling season. The documentary highlights the girls’ grit and ingenuity, and offers an inside look at the $800 million business powered by cookie booths.
Nahmias said the idea for the film was sparked by her kids, who asked her to create a film they would want to watch with their friends. So when her producer mentioned a Girl Scout had sold him a lot of cookies, Nahmias knew what story she had to tell.
“I thought, oh, maybe that's the way in where I could make a project that is going to be entertaining and visually rich and funny and heartwarming, but also have some themes in it that I'm interested in, about self-invention, about girlhood, about what it means to come of age today in times that are not so easy for kids,” she said.
Nahmias said she wanted to create a film exploring girls as complex, three-dimensional people, and Girl Scouts provided an opportunity to look at how girls find their place and learn what their value is.
For that reason, she intentionally had the camera almost exclusively focused on the girls. Parents were allowed to come into the frame — into the girls’ world — but the camera didn’t follow parents or other adults.
The film also features a mix of cookie-selling shots and scenes highlighting the girls' lives outside of Girl Scouts, whether it’s cheerleading, karate or a school dance. This balanced the cutthroat world of cookie sales to earn prizes and trips with the girls’ inner lives.
The documentary also explores what selling the sugary treats for a multibillion-dollar organization is like. For example, 12-year-old Olive is the top seller in her area of North Carolina. She knows the ins and outs of selling, even teaching younger Girl Scouts about up-selling.
But Olive also struggles with selling the $6 cookie packages and only getting $1.10 in reward credits in return, referring to the practice as child labor.
During a panel after the Saturday screening and the film, she said Girl Scouts should have more of a say on how the process works and the organization should provide more support.
“I love Girl Scouts, and it is truly part of my identity. But in every organization, there's always room for change,” Olive said.
Throughout the film, the audience laughed and cried along with the girls as they overcome challenges and push themselves to meet their cookie goals.
