EDGE Interview: Director Cristina Costantini Explores What Makes Sally Ride a Complicated Hero in 'Sally'

After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, the documentary "Sally" headed to Austin to take a bow at South by Southwest. Documenting the complicated life of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, is undoubtedly a monumental task. Hailed a real-life American hero upon her return to Earth in the 1980s, Sally's closeted life as a lesbian remained a secret until her death in 2012.

Sally Ride's friends and family, and Tam O'Shaughnessy, her life partner of almost three decades, were on hand to tell Sally's story in her absence. Her progressive, yet stifled, upbringing, marriage to a man, experience with an all-male team of astronauts, and her love affair with Tam are all on display in "Sally." Director Cristina Costantini's unflinching documentary reveals much about Sally's private existence, a life she carefully shielded from the public's awareness at a time when she was hailed for her glass ceiling-breaking moments.

EDGE caught up with Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Cristina Costantini as the film screened at SXSW to discuss Sally Ride's powerful story, her closeted life outside of NASA, and how her influence continues to inspire generations of would-be astronauts.

EDGE: I'm at SXSW now. This morning I attended a conference discussion with the astronauts of Artemis II that will fly around the moon next year. Out of a four-person mission, there is only one woman, Christina Koch, who felt the need to speak about her husband and personal life while the men barely mentioned theirs. How do you think Sally Ride would handle this situation if she were around in 2025?

Cristina Costantini: Christina Koch is a very brilliant woman, an amazing mission specialist with more than I think a year in space in total. She's an incredibly experienced person I have a lot of admiration for.

The press conference scene in our film, to me, was the most shocking thing looking back. Just how every single question that Sally got was one about how she was going to be if childbearing would be affected, if things got hard for her in the simulator, if she would weep. At certain points, people were asking if she would be serving coffee in space. People were joking about her bra and if her shoes would match her handbag – like, the most offensive stuff.

I feel like the great thing about being a documentary filmmaker is you get to, especially in an archival film like this, you get to live in the past for many years. So, I got to live in 1983 for a long time. I was really excited to see how much has changed, but, increasingly, I have this feeling that this is what we could go back to if we don't fight for the hard-won civil rights that we have now in 2025.

I think it's a scary time for many different groups of people – for women, for LGBTQ+ people, for trans people. I think it made our film more relevant than ever. We didn't think we were going to make a movie that resonated so much as it does at this time. Sally's work, and Sally's legacy, is more important than it's ever been. So I'm glad it comes out, but it saddens me that we can go backwards in the way that I fear we are.

EDGE: As Sally Ride passed away in 2012, much of this documentary is based on Tam O'Shaughnessy's account of their 27-year relationship together. What was it like working with Tam, and how did her perspective shape the film, given we don't have Sally with us to tell her side?

Cristina Costantini: Tam is a godsend for a documentary filmmaker. She is a brilliant person, she is an engaging person, and she's an incredible storyteller. On top of all of it, she has a willingness to be vulnerable. I think not everybody who has a loved one who has passed away would want to say they weren't perfect – especially someone who was a national hero.

I think the trust that we built as a team with Tam was integral to the film working. I was interested in exploring how difficult it would have been to be queer and at NASA in the 1970s and 1980s, and to celebrate Sally for who she actually was, rather than who we were told she was at that time. The key to all of that was, of course, Tam, and we wanted to tell the story, in large part, from her perspective. It was a hard thing to do visually, because there were not very many pictures. A lot of it relied on building a romance in a film that relies on visuals. So, she was the cornerstone of the storytelling for us.

EDGE: The documentary explores Sally's family life, her progressive, open-minded parents... yet [she had a] closed-off upbringing where no one shared feelings or expressed emotions. Do you feel like this contributed to her private life staying private, even after she became a symbol of American excellence as the first American woman in space?

Cristina Costantini: Sally was an incredibly private person, which made the job of being a public figure very taxing for her. She didn't want to talk to people about the normal day-to-day of her life, much less who she was sleeping with. I think it was all compounded. I found it incredibly striking that she made Tam tell her own sister, whom she was very close to, who was married to a woman, that she was also with a woman. I mean, that's a level of repression that doesn't make sense to me. I found it fascinating to see where it came from.

A decade-plus of being a documentary filmmaker and journalist, the hardest interview I've ever done is Sally's mother. I mean she's 101, sharp as a tack, could tell stories off-camera... but then, as soon as the camera was rolling, it was, like, one word answers. I asked her in the film about her feelings about talking about feelings. She says to me, "If I knew how I felt about feelings, I certainly wouldn't tell you." [Laughing] The head, like the supreme boss of introversion. I mean, you're telling the story of a woman who made history, but also she was a human being. She had a very human side.

EDGE: You're telling the story of a woman who made history, but also had a very human side. She married a man, and fell in love with a woman. She witnessed Earth from a point of view in space that shows no borders and accepted the fact that we are all humans living in space. Yet, she still couldn't face her sexuality in the public sphere. Tam, essentially her wife of several decades, outed her after Sally's death. How do you think "Sally" will change the way people view her legacy?

Cristina Costantini: I hope it will help paint a picture of Sally as a full person. I hope it will be a reminder to people that all of these historical figures that we think we know, we just know a part of who they are. We know their public faces. There are probably so many queer figures in our history that we will just never know who they were really with, or what their feelings really were.

I wonder, if she was alive in 2025, if her feelings about these things would change. Tam certainly thinks they would. One kind of bravery is riding a rocket into space, and another kind of bravery is risking being authentic to who you are during an era where people are homophobic, racist, and sexist.

EDGE: What does Sally Ride's story teach us about perseverance, love, and identity, and what do you hope audiences take away from watching "Sally?"

Cristina Costantini:I hope that the film gives people hope that this is for anybody who's ever had to hide part of themselves to get where they want to be. That's a lot of us in many different ways, and it's an experience that in 2025 is more relevant than it's ever been. I want people to see this person who did incredible things, who broke the highest glass ceiling for women, who herself had to hide something. It's an incredibly human experience.

I look up to and admire Sally so much for doing what she did, especially when she did it.