Oscar for ‘Mr Nobody Against Putin’ lost after TSA considered it a possible weapon


And the Oscar for best documentary goes back to Russian filmmaker Pavel Talankin after Transportation Security Administration workers mistook the golden statuette for a weapon and removed it from his carry-on bag for a flight to Germany.

Talankin will soon be reunited with the Academy Award he won this year for his 2025 film “Mr Nobody Against Putin,” Lufthansa Airlines said in a statement.

“We can confirm that the Oscar statue has now been located and is safely in our care in Frankfurt,” the statement 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.”

Talankin was about to board a flight Wednesday to Germany when he was stopped by TSA workers at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City.

The co-director of “Mr Nobody Against Putin,” David Borenstein, posted to Instagram on Thursday that an agent considered the Talankin’s award to be a potential danger.

“Yesterday he arrived at JFK ready to fly home to Europe, carrying the Oscar as a carry-on,” Borenstein wrote. “I snapped the first picture here of him on his way out. At the airport, a TSA agent stopped him and said the Oscar could be used as a weapon. She wouldn’t let him carry it on board.”

“You have to check it under the plane,” they said, Talankin told Deadline.

The eight-pound statuette was bubble-wrapped and placed into a cardboard box destined for the cargo hold of the plane Talankin was booked on, Borenstein told the BBC.

“They just found this flimsy box and told him to put it in there … everyone was kind of saying, ‘This is an Oscar, why are you doing this?’” he said.

But when Talankin landed Thursday in Frankfurt, there was no sign of his Oscar.

Talankin’s California-based representative, Vitaly Ataev Troshin, confirmed Friday they’ve been in touch with the airline.

“Pavel has already arrived safely in Prague and is awaiting further updates,” he said in a statement to NBC News. “We are continuing 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 got mislaid, only that they are taking steps to prevent something like this from happening again.

“The careful and secure handling of our guests’ belongings is of the utmost importance to us,” it said. “An internal review of the circumstances is ongoing.”

The TSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Talankin told Deadline said he’s flown more than a dozen times with the Oscar in his carry-on bag since winning the award in March and had never been stopped before.

“It’s completely baffling how they consider an Oscar a weapon,” Talankin said. “[I] flew with it in the cabin, and there never was any kind of problem.”

Borenstein posted his outrage on Instagram.

“I’ve looked and I can’t find a single other case of someone being forced to check an Oscar. Would Pavel have been treated the same way if he were a famous actor? Or a fluent English speaker?”

“Mr Nobody Against Putin” is a documentary that Talankin filmed at a school in a Russian mining town about how Putin was whipping-up “patriotic” propaganda to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

Fearing for his life, Talankin went into exile while Russia banned the documentary, claiming that it “propagates extremism and terrorism.”





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