Sally

Watched at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival

I love to appreciate stories about women being able to achieve goals outside of their traditional zones to impact the lives of womanhood and equality. Sally Ride is an interesting person and this documentary does a decent observation of her career and what made her important.

The filmmaker clearly is passionate to tell the tale of Ride and there are many moments of discussions, editing choices and presentations that clearly captures the time period, the purpose, and what the information is wanting to discuss. Allowing us to go into some of Ride's personal life, like her love life, and understand her more through a personal level.

I do appreciate what they are going for. However, much of the information does feel a bit repetitive. Particularly with certain subjects feeling as if we have been given but repeated a few times. Which doesn't make it a big impactful experience for certain moments.

Overall, a decent watch.

Sally Ride was chosen to be the first female astronaut in 1983. She was apart of the first class of female astronauts chosen in 1978. It seemed to me she and Judith Resnik were the top female choices and had very different personalities. Resnik perished in the Challenger Disaster in 1986.

This film is touching, fascinating and balanced. We learn what Ride was like; a terrific tennis player, a highly intelligent physicist, someone who believed in NASA until the Challenger explosion and she kept her sexuality in the closet. The fact she had to keep her affection for another woman a secret because she feared her demise was unacceptable.

Her sexuality had nothing to do with her competency and achievements. She was an incredible woman who died too young of pancreatic cancer.

It is obvious her legacy was to inspire other women to do what she did; anything they want.

Sally is more than a documentary-it's a quiet, powerful reckoning with the complexities of being a public icon and a private individual. Directed by Cristina Costantini, the film peels back the layers of Dr. Sally Ride's life, showing us not just the astronaut who broke barriers, but the human being who navigated a world that often didn't make space for her whole self.

What struck me most was how gracefully the film balanced admiration with intimacy. Ride's historic journey into space is, of course, celebrated. But it's the deeply personal moments-her long-term relationship with Tam O'Shaughnessy, the burden of keeping her identity hidden-that linger long after the credits roll. The use of archival footage, voiceovers, and interviews creates a sense of closeness, as if we're finally hearing from Sally in her own words.

The film doesn't try to be a comprehensive biography. Instead, it chooses emotion over exposition, connection over chronology. That might leave some viewers wanting more about her scientific work, but for me, the choice felt intentional-and powerful. It's a film about what it costs to live authentically, and how sometimes, that cost is silence.

Sally is tender, haunting, and deeply necessary. In telling her story now-with honesty and care-it gives her the full humanity she was denied in life.

This documentary is narrated by Tam O'Shaugnessy, who met Sally Ride as teenage tennis players, and ended up being her life partner for Ride's last 27 years.

Tam played several years of professional tennis, while Sally went to university. Sally managed to get her Ph. D in astrophysics in time for her to be selected as an astronaut candidate for the 1st group NASA recruited to include women and minorities. There is a lot of footage and discussion about her training, etc. Leading to her 1st flight, making her the 1st American woman in space.. Afterwards, the story concentrated on her publicity work, including her refusal to meet with sexist Bob Hope. Her doctorate allowed her to demand being addressed as Sally or Doctor Ride.

Sally had crossed paths with Tam, and, while married to a fellow astronaut, started seeing Tam regularly on the side. After Sally quit NASA for a teaching job in California, Tam reluctantly joined her, and they stayed together for the rest of Sally's life. Keenly aware of the negative reaction to the coming out of Billy Jean King, Sally kept her private life secret, and it was only when Tam wrote Sally obituary that she was outed.

Some notable people in Sally's life also appear in this film, like Billy Jean King and some of her fellow astronauts. It is not an exhaustive recitation of Sally's career, and the omissions may lead to some misleading impressions. However, the main theme is that of the relationship between Sally and Tam, and that comes off very well.

Considering how Sally worked so hard to play down the aspect of her being a woman @ NASA, it seems a shame that this documentary spent so much time on her sexuality compared to her achievements that she would want to be remembered for. It is great that her on again-off again partner comforted her in her final days but to spend so much time on the ups and downs of she and her partner's relationship seems to be just what Sally wouldn't have wanted. She was obviously a private person and this documentary seems, sadly, to be more of her partner wanting recognition of her special relationship to a celebrity. As a person who grew up following the US space program and an avid of "love who you want to love; live your life how you want to" supporter, I was really disappointed that Sally's private life seemed to be the thrust of this documentary.