An Oscar that briefly went rogue between New York and Germany is now back in airline hands. Lufthansa says it has located the missing statuette belonging to Russian-born filmmaker Pavel Talankin, whose documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin won this year's Academy Award for best feature documentary. Talankin says security at John F. Kennedy International Airport stopped him from carrying the trophy on board Wednesday, arguing it could be used as a weapon, and required him to check it instead, the BBC reports. When he landed in Germany, the box holding the award was nowhere to be found.
- "The Oscar statue has now been located and is safely in our care in Frankfurt," Lufthansa said. "We are in direct contact with the guest to arrange its personal return as quickly as possible. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused and have apologized to the owner." The airline added that an "internal review of the circumstances is ongoing."
Co-director David Borenstein said there was a "big kerfuffle" at a security checkpoint as staff hastily boxed and bubble-wrapped the Oscar for the hold. "They just found this flimsy box and told him to put it in there," he says. "Everyone was kind of saying, 'this is an Oscar, why are you doing this?'" Talankin says he has flown with the statuette around a dozen times without incident since winning the award in March. "It's completely baffling how they consider an Oscar a weapon," he says.
- At the checkpoint, Talankin, who does not speak fluent English, called executive producer Robin Hessman, who speaks Russian. She argued with officials over speakerphone. "The woman from TSA was absolutely intractable," Hessman tells Deadline. "This wouldn't have happened to Leonardo DiCaprio." Talankin says a Lufthansa agent offered to walk him to the gate and take possession of the statuette during the flight, but the TSA agent rejected the compromise.
"I've looked and I can't find a single other case of someone being forced to check an Oscar," Borenstein said in an Instagram post. "Would Pavel have been treated the same way if he were a famous actor? Talankin, now living in exile from Russia, frequently travels with the award to screenings of the film, which examines wartime propaganda in the Russian primary school where he worked as an events coordinator and videographer. It has been banned from Russian streaming platforms on the grounds that it "propagates extremism and terrorism."
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