Oscar nominee James Cromwell has joined the cast of Still, Michael McGowan’s Canadian independent film shooting currently in northern Ontario and Brunswick.

Cromwell joins fellow Oscar nominee and Canadian native Geneviève Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days, The House of Yes) to tell the story of an elderly couple forced to battle local authorities as they try and construct a home. McGowan, who opened the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival with his Score: A Hockey Musical, has assembled a cast with deep Canadian roots. In addition to Bujold, Still features Canuck actors Rick Roberts, Julie Stewart and Jonathan Potts, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Representing America in the Great White Northern cast will be Campbell Scott.

Anytime an indie can lure a marketable, awards-caliber star like Cromwell, it’s an instant boost to the production. This is McGowan’s fifth feature, and while he is a name in his native Canada, his previous films (One Week with Joshua Jackson and the comedy-drama Saint Ralph) have yet to break through in the States. That could change with Cromwell attached to Still, which has a distribution deal in Canada through Mongrel Media but will have to be shopped for U.S. distribution.

Cromwell, meanwhile, will next be seen in Michel Hazanavicius’s crowd-pleasing silent film The Artist, in which he has a small role, as well as Maksim Korostyshevsky’s Soldiers of Fortune, where he stars opposite Sean Bean, Christian Slater and Ving Rhames in a drama about wealthy thrill-seekers paying top dollar to be inserted into fictional military maneuvers..with disastrous results.