TIMES RECORD • March 11, 2026
A viral YouTube video shared by a friend during COVID lockdown, a fascination with the art of freestyle canoeing and a fondness for Mainer-isms inspired a film written and directed by Samuel Dunning, a filmmaker and actor with roots in Brunswick. Dunning’s mockumentary, “Canoe Dig it?,” about the trials and tribulations of a freestyle canoeing competition in northern Maine, will paddle to local movie screens this spring. “It’s about a fictional competition in northern Maine, but the sport itself of freestyle canoeing is quite real,” Dunning said. “It’s sort of like watching figure [skating], but in a canoe.”