The Russian director who won best documentary this year for “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” has lost his Oscar statuette after he was forced to check the award in hold luggage on a flight from New York to Germany.
Co-director of the award winner Pavel Talankin said that Talankin was to fly from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Frankfurt on the German carrier Lufthansa.
His co-director David Borenstein said Thursday that while Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents told him the 8.5-pound (3.8-kilogram) statue poses a potential security threat.
“At the airport, a TSA agent stopped him and said the Oscar could be used as a weapon,” Borenstein said on Instagram.
“Powell didn’t have any bags to check it, so TSA put Oscar in a box and sent it to the bottom of the plane,” she said, posting a series of photos including the box.
“It never came to Frankfurt.”
Responding to Borenstein’s Instagram post, Lufthansa said it was taking the matter seriously.
As reported, a company spokesperson also said, “We deeply regret this situation.”
“Our team is handling this matter with the utmost care and urgency, and we are conducting an extensive internal search to ensure that Oscar is found and returned as soon as possible.”
Speaking to online magazine Deadline.com after arriving in Germany on Thursday, Talankin said it was “completely baffling how they treat Oscar as a weapon.”
He told the outlet that on previous flights on various airlines, he had flown with it “in the cabin,” and never had any issues.
About Pavel Talankin’s Oscar Award:
Talankin and Borenstein’s documentary used two years of footage that Talankin recorded at a school where he worked in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia to show how students were exposed to pro-war messages.
Talankin, 35, who fled Russia in 2024, has defended the film as a record for posterity, showing “how an entire generation became angry and aggressive.”
