Give Me the Backstory: Get to Know Cristina Costantini, the Director of SALLY

By Lucy Spicer

One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there's always more we can learn about them as people. We decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our ongoing series: Give Me the Backstory!

As the first American woman to fly in space, Sally Ride has inspired countless women and girls not only to pursue careers in science, but to pursue their dreams, period. One devoted admirer of Ride is filmmaker Cristina Costantini, whose film SALLY premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Winner of the 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, Costantini's new documentary chronicles Ride's life, employing archival footage from NASA and interviews with Ride's friends and family to craft a portrait of the incomparable individual she was before her death in 2012.

But the most prominently featured interviewee in Costantini's documentary is not a fellow astronaut or even a member of Ride's immediate family - it's Tam O'Shaughnessy, Ride's decadeslong romantic life partner, whose relationship to Ride was unknown to most of the world until it was mentioned in Ride's obituary. Part of what drew me to this story is the question of what it means to lead your life as a symbol. National heroes like Sally inspire us, give us hope, and show us just how far we can go. But fame so often means hurting the people we love most for the benefit of those we'll never meet, explains Costantini. In Sally's case, her life partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy, was forced to live in the shadows for much of her life, her love never truly recognized until it was too late.

Costantini's film doesn't gloss over Ride's scientific and professional accomplishments, but it gives equal weight to the parts of her life that she felt she couldn't show the world, ultimately allowing viewers to know her better. I was drawn to telling the story of a trailblazing woman fighting for respect in a male-dominated world. But, above all, I wanted to explore this beautiful, unknown love story. Our film celebrates the Sally whom we all knew through her accomplishments and, for the first time, pays homage to the one we never could, says Costantini.

Read on to learn more about SALLY and its filmmaker, including the decision behind Costantini's strategic use of 16mm film and why she feels Ride's story is especially relevant to audiences today.

LINK:	https://www.sundance.org/blogs/give-me-the-backstory-get-to-know-crist...
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