Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, was a childhood hero to many, including Cristina Costantini. The director of “Sally,” a new documentary that chronicles both the public and private sides of Ride’s life, admired her subject so profusely that she painted a portrait of her when she was in the third grade.
“I think seeing a girl in a jumpsuit going to space, just symbolically for me as a third-grader, was so cool. I couldn’t imagine anything cooler,” Costantini reflected at TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt. “I painted a huge mural of her on my school wall. Everybody was supposed to paint their heroes, and so Michael Jordan, Brett Favre, and Sally Ride was the lineup. [That mural] still exists in my elementary school.”
Ride may have been a figure in Costantini’s life from an early age, but the journey to actually making “Sally” didn’t begin until after the astronaut’s death. “In 2012 when she passed away, I found out with the rest of the world that she was survived by her life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, a woman, and that this amazing 27-year-long romance was kept private from the rest of the world,” Costantini explained. “I wanted to know more about that.”
The biggest turning point came when Costantini met O’Shaughnessy. “I fell in love with Tam,” the director revealed. “I wanted to do a film that celebrated the romance they had in a way that it couldn’t be celebrated at the time. It was really important to me to capture the feeling of what it is to fall in love, to have a secret. I wanted it to be sexy! So telling this intrepid space story side by side with an intimate love story was kind of the project of the film.”
Costantini wanted to capture both the professional achievements Ride accomplished and the personal concessions she was forced to make. “There’s a version of this film that could just be, ‘If you try really hard, you can go really far and you can do big things, and you should be inspired to do big things like Sally did,’” Costantini acknowledged. “I think that’s part of the film, but there’s this whole other, more nuanced story, more interesting story, about what it means when our heroes have to hurt the people they love most for the benefit of people they’ll never meet. That was a much more compelling storyline to me.”
The added weight of “Sally” coming out at a time when many in the LGBT community feel less safe and less certain about their place in a Trump-run America isn’t lost on Costantini. “I think this film is for anyone who’s ever had to hide part of themselves to get where they want to be. I think it’s really sad that in 2025 it’s more relevant than ever,” the filmmaker remarked.
“When we started making this film, I didn’t think we would be here,” she continued. “But I think it’s a reminder of how far we’ve come and also a reminder that this is what it looks like when people have to hide who they are. I feel honored to be part of telling this very queer story at this time.”
