‘Sally’ tells the public and private story of American space pioneer

Cinema | July 1st, 2025

By Greg Carlson

As we continue to deal with the ongoing horrorshow of racism, misogyny and transphobia embraced by the current administration, films like “Sally” can serve as an important reminder that love triumphs over hate time and again. News broke just this month that the Pentagon had officially renamed the John Lewis-class oiler USNS Harvey Milk for World War II officer Oscar V. Peterson. National Public Radio reported that “Under [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth's guidance, the Navy is reviewing the names of several other ships named after women, Black and Hispanic people.” Should these attacks on equity, diversity and inclusion — all historically valuable attributes that define America and the American dream — continue, it is not hard to imagine future efforts to strip the name of Sally Ride from the elementary schools, sections of highway and spacecraft dedicated in her honor.

Physicist and astronaut Ride, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2012 at the age of 61, is best remembered as the first American woman to travel to space. Her personal and professional journey is the subject of Cristina Costantini’s feature documentary “Sally,” which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and is now available on Hulu and Disney+. Costantini draws from a rich vein of NASA archival footage (a reliable filmmaking choice for decades of visual storytelling), as well as new interviews with Ride’s colleagues, friends and family members. The person who figures most prominently is Tam O’Shaughnessy, the love of Ride’s life and her partner of more than a quarter of a century. O’Shaughnessy directly addresses the challenges faced by queer people during an era of suffocating pressure and prejudice.

Along with many typical and traditional markers of the biographical portrait, Costantini inserts re-enactments imagining the ongoing development of the romantic relationship between Ride and O’Shaughnessy from the forging of their early friendship to the end of Ride’s life. None of these scenes add anywhere near as much value as the abundant footage of Ride’s thoroughly photographed tenure at NASA, but they are subtle enough to avoid being a total distraction. More illuminating are Ride’s reactions to members of the press when she is peppered with sexist questions and embarrassing assumptions. Costantini builds an intriguing argument that Ride’s calculated refusal to seek the spotlight worked in her favor, when she was selected over fellow NASA Group 8 member and robotic arm operator Judy Resnik to fly on the seventh Space Shuttle mission and become the first American woman in space.

Resnik would lose her life in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in January of 1986, a grim chapter in our national history placed in new context by Costantini as she briefly examines Ride’s role in hearings conducted during the aftermath of the tragedy. “Sally” is filled with just enough detail on the inner workings of NASA politics to satisfy aeronautics aficionados. And when untangling some of the personal reasons that went into Ride’s long silence, Costantini points to examples like Billie Jean King, who speaks on camera in the film about the cost of public scrutiny during an era in which disclosure could negatively alter or even end careers.

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