The missing Oscar of the director of the Putin film was discovered after the TSA made him send | Oscars 2026

Oscar statue of Pavel Talankin, star and co-director of the Academy award winner documents Mr No Opposition to Putinthat went missing after being confiscated by airport officials in New York has been found, according to the airline involved.

Talankin said he lost his Oscar after Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at John F Kennedy Airport in New York refused to allow him to bring a Lufthansa flight to Germany. saying that it can be used as a weapon.

The airline has now told a BBC that the picture “has been found and is in our hands in Frankfurt”, and it is planned to return to Talankin “as soon as possible”.

“We are very sorry for the problem and have apologized to the owner of the plane.” Careful and safe handling of passengers’ luggage is of utmost importance to us,” the airline representative added. “An internal review of the incident is ongoing.”

Talankin, whose articles on the Russian system of publishing high schools became famous all over the world, said Deadline that he brought the statue on several flights without incident. But when he arrived at JFK’s terminal 1 on Wednesday morning, the TSA Supporters said they could not take the 8.5lb trophy into the arena as it posed a security risk.

“It’s amazing how they see Oscar as a tool,” Talankin told the station after arriving in Frankfurt, Germany, without Oscar. On previous flights through many airlines, he said, “(I) flew with it in the cabin and there were no problems.”

According to Talankin, a Lufthansa flight attendant called security on Wednesday and offered to walk Talankin to the gate and keep the statue with him for the duration of the flight, but the TSA agent refused. The filmmaker says he was told to look at the prize the plane has. But without a sturdy suitcase to store it in, he opted for a carton provided by Lufthansa, and filmed two flight attendants as they wrapped the Oscar, tagged it and took off with it.

Talankin said that the box did not reach Frankfurt. “(Pavel) called me this morning from Frankfurt to say that Lufthansa doesn’t have it. They lost it,” Robin Hessman, executive producer of Mr Nobody Against Putin and Talankin’s Russian translator, told Deadline. “They have the ticket number (for the box) and they can’t find it.”

The film’s director, David Borenstein, posted photos on Instagram of the ad hoc shipping box and the lost plane’s luggage. “I’ve looked and I haven’t found a single case of anyone being forced to see the Oscars,” he wrote. “Would Pavel have been treated the same if he was a famous actor? Or a good English speaker?”

Borenstein told the BBC he was relieved the statue had been found after “a huge kerfuffle”.

“They just found an empty box and told him to put it in … everyone was saying, ‘What kind of Oscar is this, why are you doing this?’

Talankin, a former school videographer in Karabash, Russia, now lives in Europe after fleeing his home country with the footage of Mr Nobody. The Russian court has been acting ever since prohibited Bafta-winning film from several platforms, saying that it promotes “bad ideas” about the Russian government and the war in Ukraine.

“Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country,” Borenstein said at the Oscars in March. “And what we saw in working with this video is that you lose because of countless, small, small things.”

In his speech accepting the award, Talankin pleaded on behalf of countries that “instead of shooting stars … they have rocket launchers and drones”.

He concluded: “In the name of our future, in the name of all our children, stop all these wars now.”