Filmmakers, and adults in general, need to do a better job of trusting young people to take in and understand how the world works. We as artists can tell them stories that are incisive and entertaining. They can think critically about labor, economy, gender, class, and other issues. In the process, they’ll gain knowledge about the world around them and direct experience with the power of storytelling itself.

When my kids were 9 and 11, they set out a challenge for me as a mom and an artist: to make my next film one they would want to share with their friends. It felt like an exciting and worthwhile pursuit. I make documentaries, and none of my previous films were specifically intended for young audiences. However, I wanted the ideas within them about social issues, community, and self-invention to be accessible to kids and adults alike.

My most recent documentary, Cookie Queens, began soon after my kids issued their challenge, when my producer told me a story about a young woman who got him to empty his wallet buying Girl Scout cookies. She complimented his looks and got his family’s attention, and then suddenly her mom appeared from around the corner with a wagon full of cookies. Listening to him talk about his surprise at this young woman’s savvy, I realized that the story of Girl Scout cookies could speak to people of all ages and operate on many levels. It had irresistible nostalgia and plucky kids. It could also examine the way girls and women are perceived, and see themselves, and how those two views are often not in sync.

What does it mean to age as a girl? What expectations and assumptions do people have of us? The cookies were a way into looking at girlhood and capitalism, and also into my own parallel experience, as a parent of ambitious kids, and as a woman-artist who has to sell my “cookies,” by which I mean get my work seen and funded.

I knew that the movie was going to show the ways kids learn about the economy and their place in it, and how the playing field isn’t level. I thought that for audiences to see that through Girl Scout cookies might be less dry than seeing it through education or healthcare, or the other typical high-stakes ways we learn about inequity. The cookies would be honey on the razor’s edge.

The first step was to find a group of Girl Scouts whose experiences could carry the larger themes of this story. I didn’t care so much about how many cookies the girls had sold, except as an indicator of who was really passionate about this activity. Over hundreds of Zoom interviews, my casting director and I asked Girl Scouts about their “whys,” taking into account their ages, where they lived, and their family dynamics and backgrounds to try to find a cross section of America today. Then, I visited nine families, spending a few days with them without a camera, before selecting seven girls to film. During the editing process, we settled on four main stories.

The four “cookie queens” the movie follows live in San Diego, El Paso, Los Angeles, and Charlotte. One has type 1 diabetes and often can’t eat the cookies she’s selling. Another is trying to sell enough cookies to go to Girl Scout camp, and her parents are worried about going into debt if they don’t hit their goal. Another is trying to live up to her older sisters’ legacy as they age out of Girl Scouts. The last is breaking her own sales records and questioning why her troop only gets $1 in profits off every $6 box.

From the beginning, I committed to shooting Cookie Queens entirely observationally. There aren’t any interviews; it’s all in the moment, present tense. I wanted to keep the audience in the girls’ world. The bigger themes and social issues arise naturally, anchored in the girls’ emotions and experiences as they live their lives.

One of the girls in the movie said recently in a press interview, when you love something a lot, you’re going to be critical about it—you want it to be better. She was talking about the Girl Scouts organization, and her advocacy to get more profits into the hands of troops. But I think it’s true for my audiences, too. If you can care about the fact that it’s not fair for Girl Scouts to only get $1 per box of cookies they sell, or that families risk going into debt to buy cookies in order to send their kids to Girl Scout camp, then you may also care about how American families commonly go into debt to pay for their children’s healthcare, school, and other basic needs.

I’ve been going to screenings around the country with a lot of kids in the audience (including my own kids, who did invite their friends to the premiere—mom mission accomplished!), and the conversations have been illuminating. Young people ask the Girl Scouts in the film about the pressures they face. They ask for the girls’ advice on how to advocate for the change they want to see in the world.

There’s value in young people enjoying themselves while watching longer format, nonfiction storytelling. They see themselves reflected onscreen and also get the chance to think about what it means to tell a real story, a true story. When watching a documentary, we sense how the camera isn’t showing us everything, so of course there is not a single authoritative truth. We see that there are many authentic truths, and those are worth bearing witness to, thinking critically about, and discussing.

I hope some of the young viewers of Cookie Queens will one day find ways to share their own stories. I look forward to taking my children and grandchildren to the movies to see them.

Alysa Nahmias is a filmmaker and founder of AJNA Films. Her directing credits include Cookie Queens, which recently premiered at Sundance and won the SXSW Festival Favorite Audience Award; the Emmy Award-winning Art & Krimes By Krimes; and Unfinished Spaces, which won a 2012 Film Independent Spirit Award and is in the MoMA collection.

Primary editor: Sarah Rothbard | Secondary editor: Eryn Brown