Oscar Statuette Lost After Security Check on Flight to Germany

The Oscar statuette belonging to Russian director Pavel Talankin, who won best documentary this year for Mr. Nobody Against Putin, has gone missing after he was required to place the award in checked baggage on a flight from New York to Germany, his co-director David Borenstein said on Thursday.

Talankin had been due to fly from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Frankfurt on Lufthansa. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents told him the 8.5 lb (3.8 kg) statuette posed a potential security risk, Borenstein said.

“At the airport, a TSA agent stopped him and said the Oscar could be used as a weapon”, Borenstein said.

“Pavel didn’t have a bag to check it in, so the TSA put the Oscar in a box and sent it to the bottom of the plane”, he added. “It never arrived in Frankfurt.”

Lufthansa said it was taking the matter seriously.

“We will do everything we can to find the Oscar as fast as possible and have already escalated this,” the airline said.

Speaking to Deadline.com after arriving in Germany on Thursday, Talankin said it was “completely baffling how they consider an Oscar a weapon”.

He added that on previous flights he had carried the statuette “in the cabin, and there never was any kind of problem”.

The documentary is based on two years of footage filmed at a school in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region and shows how students were exposed to pro-war messaging.

(reuters, bak)