And the Oscar for best documentary returns back to Russian filmmaker Pavel Talankin after Transportation Security Administration employees mistook the golden statuette for a weapon and removed it from his carry-on luggage for a flight to Germany.
Talankin will soon regain the Oscar he won this year for his 2025 film “Mr. Nobody vs. Putin,” Lufthansa Airlines said in a statement.
“We can confirm that the Oscars statue has now been located and is in our care in Frankfurt,” the statement said. “We are in direct contact with the customer to organize their return personally as quickly as possible. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused and apologize to the owner.”
Talankin was about to board a flight to Germany on Wednesday when he was stopped by TSA agents at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.
“Mr. Nobody vs. Putin” co-director David Borenstein posted to Instagram On Thursday, an agent considered the Talankin reward a potential danger.
“Yesterday he arrived at JFK, ready to return home to Europe, with the Oscar in his carry-on,” Borenstein wrote. “I took the first photo of him here as he was walking out. At the airport, a TSA agent stopped him and told him the Oscar could be used as a weapon. She wouldn’t let him bring it on board.”
“You need to check it under the plane,” they said, Talankin said. Deadline.
The eight-pound statuette was wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in a cardboard box intended for the hold of the plane Talankin was booked on, Borenstein. told BBC.
“They just found this flimsy box and told him to put it in there… everyone was kind of like, ‘It’s an Oscar, why are you doing that?'” he said.
But when Talankin landed in Frankfurt on Thursday, there was no trace of his Oscar.
Talankin’s California-based representative, Vitaly Ataev Troshin, confirmed on Friday that he had been in contact with the airline.
“Pavel has already arrived safely in Prague and is awaiting further updates,” he said in a statement to NBC News. “We continue to monitor the situation closely and will provide any new information as it becomes available.”
Lufthansa, in its statement, did not explain how the statuette had been misplaced, but simply indicated that it was taking measures to prevent such a situation from happening again.
“The careful and secure management of our customers’ affairs is of the utmost importance to us,” the statement said. “An internal review of the circumstances is underway.”
The TSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Talankin said Deadline said he had flown more than a dozen times with the Oscar in his carry-on bag since winning the award in March and had never been arrested before.
“It’s completely baffling how they view an Oscar as a weapon,” Talankin said. “[I] I have flown with it in the cabin and there has never been a problem.
Borenstein posted his outrage on Instagram.
“I searched and couldn’t find any other cases of anyone being forced to verify an Oscar. Would Pavel have been treated the same way if he had been a famous actor? Or if he spoke English fluently?”
“Mr. Nobody vs. Putin” is a documentary that Talankin filmed at a school in a Russian mining town about how Putin was fanning “patriotic” propaganda to justify the invasion of Ukraine.
Fearing for his life, Talankin goes into exile while Russia banned the documentary, saying it “spreads extremism and terrorism.”
