Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie made so many people cry. It’s not just a single tear either, but rather full-body sobs.

She didn’t intend to shed a tear with “My Old Ass,” now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell the story of a young woman in conversation with herself. The movie is funny enough (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott occurs because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it also packs an emotional punch.

Writing, Park said, is often her way of solving problems. When she wrote “My Old Ass,” she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her entire nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn’t know it at the time, but it would be the last time, and she was beginning to wonder what it would be like to know that.

In the film, older Elliott (Aubrey Plaza) advises younger Elliott (Maisy Stella) not to be in such a hurry to leave his provincial town, his younger brothers and his parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. ‘they are. She also tells him to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he’s kind of cute.

At 38, Park is just beginning his career as a filmmaker. Her first, “The Fallout,” in which Jenna Ortega plays a teenager in the wake of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn’t even seem real. But it caught the attention of Margot Robbie’s production company, LuckyChap Entertainment, who contacted Park to see what other ideas she had in the works.

“They were a big part of encouraging me to do it,” Park said. “They are just really balanced and good people, which makes them excellent producers. They treat everyone the same, that’s the atmosphere I love. There is no ego, there is no hierarchy.

LuckyChap even allowed him to launch Stella first and build it around her. In a more traditional setting, she says, you start with the most famous person.

Park began writing and directing after about 20 years of acting career. Originally from a small town in Canada (Lindsay, Ontario), she knew she loved the arts but had no connection to the industry. The only career she could imagine was acting, she said. Fortunately, she enjoyed some success, with roles in films (“Charlie Bartlett”) and TV shows like “Life with Derek” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” (she was Grace, the conservative cheerleader). It was on this show that she met one of her dearest friends, Shailene Woodley, and began to realize that maybe acting wasn’t really her passion.

There wasn’t a single “ah-ha” moment, but she remembers seeing how passionate Woodley was about landing the role on “The Descendants,” which turned out to be her breakout.

“She really wanted this role and she knew it was her role and she fought for it and worked so hard and was so passionate. I remember thinking that it was so inspiring and so cool that she felt that way about it. And then I was like, ‘(expletive), I don’t feel that way as an actor.'”

Instead, Park found that spark in writing and then directing, starting with short films and music videos for Billie Eilish, Gucci Mane and even her husband, singer-songwriter Tyler Hilton, before embarking on a feature film.

“I didn’t really know that writing and directing films was a viable career. So I did it a little backwards,” she said. “I feel so lucky to have had such an education of about 20 years on a film set before being behind the camera, where I was really absorbing way more than I thought I would absorb.”

As a filmmaker, Park said she has two aesthetic extremes within her. The first is “sincere, enduring and nostalgic films”. Think Chris Columbus, “Stepmother,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “My Girl,” she said. Her other passion is calm, French and feminine cinema. “Tomboy” by Céline Sciamma is the only film she has downloaded to her computer. On set, she likes to keep things calm, reminding those around her that they’re not “saving lives.”

“I honestly think it’s an important mentality to have because people get so caught up in it. There will always be a fire, there will always not be enough time, but there will always be a solution to the problem,” she said. “I try to be clear about what I need, but also be very flexible. I think the best directors are people who see their role as not being the ultimate genius behind the magic, because you’re not. You are the curator of creating an environment conducive to creativity.

She’s seen all the extremes as an actress: the energies that work, the ones that don’t, and how all actors need different things from the director. And her actors appreciate that about her.

“I want every movie for the rest of my life to be directed by a woman,” Stella said. “It was one of my favorite experiences. I was just constantly surrounded by feminine energy, which was very inspiring to me and very safe. It was just very comfortable and nice and it was very easy to work in that environment.

It’s been almost a year now since “My Old Ass” became one of the breakout films at the Sundance Film Festival, and almost three years since she started working on it, which is roughly half of her daughter’s life. almost 5 years (she calls it “the Maisie movie”). Also with a 4-month-old newborn, she has just started working on another film. But she still feels the brilliance of “My Old Ass” and the effect it has on the audience.

“You don’t really expect people to feel anything, much less how much they seem to feel about the movie,” she said. “It’s been a little surreal, honestly and really beautiful and hard to metabolize everything.”