Loktar Abdallah Moundy as Slimane Alain Khouani as the Hotel Receptionist Production The film is a continuation of the OSS 117 series of spy films from the 1950s and 1960s, which were in turn based on a series of novels by Jean Bruce, a prolific French popular writer. However, instead of taking the genre seriously, the film parodies the original series and other conventional spy and Eurospy films, most noticeably the early James Bond series right down to the cinematography, art direction, music and costume of the 1960s (although this is a slight anachronism as the film is stated in dialogue to be set in 1955, hence a sequence where OSS 117 briefly dances the twist is out of place). For example, driving scenes are all filmed with obvious rear projection, night scenes were clearly shot during the day with a blue filter and camera movements are simple, and avoid the three-dimensional Steadicam and crane movements that are easily accomplished today. The scene at the Cairo airport was filmed in the entrance hall of a campus of Panthéon-Assas University. Michael Hazanavicius suggested Jean Paul Belmondo for playing Armand Lesignac. He requested it and Claude Brosset played it. The main character in the OSS 117 series is a secret agent of the Office of Strategic Services, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, also known by his code name OSS 117. The character is played by French actor Jean Dujardin, and he is supported in the film by Bérénice Bejo. The film's sequel is OSS 117: Lost in Rio, and Dujardin, Bejo and director Michel Hazanavicius would later reunite for the Academy Award-winning The Artist, a film that, like Cairo, Nest of Spies, pays tribute to a past genre of filmmaking. Reception OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies received critical acclaim. The film won the Golden Space Needle award as the most popular film of the Seattle International Film Festival and the Tokyo Grand Prix award given to the best film at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2006. It was relatively successful at the box office in France, with an attendance figure of over 2 million. Due to the film's performance, a 2009 sequel has been made titled OSS 117: Lost in Rio. Critics outside France gave the film positive reviews. As of June, 2009, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 76% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on