Sundance Filmmaker Cristina Costantini Blasts Off With Sally Ride Movie, And Director Violet Du Feng Explores China’s ‘Dating Game’ – Doc Talk Podcast

Filmmaker Cristina Costantini is leaving the Sundance Film Festival with an award and with distribution already secured for her documentary Sally, about the late astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

Costantini won the 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, an award selected by a jury of film and science professionals and “presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character.”

Sally Ride, who earned a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford before joining NASA’s space shuttle program in the late 1970s, more than qualifies according to the Sloan Prize criteria. But the documentary constitutes much more than a recitation of Ride’s credentials. It’s also the story of her long relationship with romantic partner Tam O’Shaughnessy, a loving bond Ride kept secret until her death.

Costantini joins the latest episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss her film, which is expected to be released later in the year by National Geographic Documentary Films. The director reveals how Sally and Tam navigated their relationship at a time when coming out as gay would have sunk any chance for Ride to shatter the glass ceiling of space exploration. And she explains how the experience of tennis great Billie Jean King informed Ride’s decision to keep her private life very private.

Also on this week’s episode, we speak with another filmmaker who’s just coming off her Sundance world premiere: Violet Du Feng, director of The Dating Game. Her film examines a startling reality for Chinese men of marrying age – many are very eager to find a mate, but with men vastly outnumbering women (because of China’s one child policy and a decided cultural preference for male offspring), the odds run against them.

The filmmaker follows several young men who try to enhance their marketability as potential spouses by seeking the advice of a dating coach. The film ripples with humorous and poignant moments, while subtly offering a profound portrait of contemporary Chinese society at a time of great demographic and cultural change.

That’s on the new edition of Doc Talk, co-hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley), and Matt Carey, Deadline’s documentary editor. Doc Talk is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.

Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.