For Samuel Dunning, seeing his film “Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox” on the shelves of the Bull Moose on Maine Street in Brunswick was a full-circle moment.

“One of the biggest reasons I got into movies and filmmaking was because of Bull Moose,” the Brunswick-born actor said.

“In high school, and even younger, I’d go to their dollar DVD bucket and just grab a couple random things and see what I got,” he said.

Written and directed by Stimson Snead, the comedy/science fiction movie follows Tim Travers, a mad scientist determined to solve a time travel “paradox” by traveling back in time in one-minute intervals to continuously kill his younger self. Eventually, he amasses endless versions of himself, creating a fast-talking team of Tims, each with different personality traits ranging from redeemable to egomaniacal.

Throughout the film, Dunning, as multiple Tims, has crazed scientific debates with himself, gets killed in dozens of ways and even forms unexpected connections with himself.

“I basically get the challenge of having to make chemistry with myself,” he said.

The feature-length movie was born from Snead’s 2022 short film of the same name, which also starred Dunning, as well as Danny Trejo, Joel McHale, Keith David and Felicia Day. Unlike the short, which presents Travers as a one-sided, fully mad scientist, the full version — which hit streaming services over the summer — takes the time to delve into his complexities and gets the audience rooting for a somewhat unlikeable character. The film premiered at the Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival in March 2024.

“We came up with the idea of, ‘Oh, what if (Travers is) filled with self-loathing, and it becomes a whole thing about learning to love yourself?’” Dunning said.

Was it difficult to play dozens of different roles — all slightly different versions of the same person?

“I blacked out and it just happened,” Dunning said.

The experience was experimental and ridiculous, but a lot of fun, he said.

“There were various times on set, especially when there’d be six (Tims) talking to each other, where I’d be like, ‘Wait, alright, is this the mean one or the dumb one?’”

Similarly, the filmmaking process itself was a whirlwind. From scripting the movie to premiering it in festivals, the project took just 18 months, said Snead, the director. The crew and cast shot the film in one month in brutally cold Spokane, Washington.

“I don’t think I have ever had the experience of working with such a consistently pleasant team, both in the actors (and) behind the camera,” said director Snead, who also played the hitman Helter in the film.

To make it all work, Snead named all the Tims after letters of the Greek alphabet and honed in on six of them with distinct motivations and personality traits. A few days into filming, the crew started giving Dunning nametags with his letter (like “Alpha” Tim or “Zeta” Tim) every time he changed roles, to differentiate the characters, a detail that would make it into the film.

“The biggest goal in both the edit and the writing was to make it where you don’t have to track any of them,” Snead said. “You should be able to watch and enjoy and genuinely not make an effort to keep track of who is who, so that if you forget completely, you’re still going to have the same narrative experience.”

Both star and writer-director hope the film gets more movie fans interested in indie productions.

“Not everything needs to be this massive studio film,” Dunning said. “You need to take more chances on small filmmakers and people just starting out and people putting their heart and soul into stuff.”

A 2007 Brunswick High School graduate, Dunning now splits his time between New York City and Los Angeles, when he isn’t visiting family in Maine, where his mom runs a jewelry studio. Inspired by his high school love of movies, he attended New York University for filmmaking. His acting career came later, during a “creatively unfulfilled” time, when a friend recommended he try out acting classes.

In 2019, Dunning combined his acting and writing talents to create the horror short “Rick and Ruby,” which led to a meeting with Snead at a film festival. He’s also booked roles in TV series like “Blue Bloods,” “The Equalizer” and “The Gilded Age” and starred in the New England-set horror film “Dead Whisper.”

Nowadays, he’s working on promoting his directorial debut, “Canoe Dig It?” — a Maine-set mockumentary about a freestyle canoeing competition at Moosehead Lake that he also wrote and starred in.

He hopes to get it on Maine film screens — and maybe even produce a DVD for sale at Bull Moose — soon.