Los Angeles: Russian filmmaker Pasha Talankin, the co-director of Academy Award-winning documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin, has lost his Oscar statuette after security officials at New York airport refused to let him board a flight with it.
Talankin, who was also the protagonist of Mr. Nobody Against Putin, which won the Best Feature Documentary at this year’s Academy Awards, said at a security checkpoint at JFK Airport Wednesday, an official stopped him from carrying on board the statuette, which weighs approximately 3.8 kg.
He added that he had flown more than a dozen times with the Oscar since winning it in March without any incident.
“It’s completely baffling how they consider an Oscar a weapon… (I) flew with it in the cabin, and there never was any kind of problem,” Talankin told the outlet from Frankfurt, Germany, where he arrived Thursday morning on a Lufthansa flight.
A Lufthansa airline agent at the checkpoint offered to escort the filmmaker to the gate and hold the statuette for the duration of the flight, but the security official refused, he revealed.
A proposal to store the Oscar in the cockpit was also overruled by airport security and a Lufthansa supervisor, he added.
The film’s executive producer Robin Hessman, who speaks Russian, was contacted by Talankin to help translate during his exchanges with airport security and airline staff.
Left with no option, Talankin was asked to check the award in as cargo.
The filmmaker, who had already checked in his luggage, was given a cardboard box by airline officials. Two agents then bubble-wrapped the Oscar and took it for transport, a process Talankin recorded on his phone.
However, when the filmmaker landed in Frankfurt, the box was nowhere to be found.
“He calls me this morning from Frankfurt saying Lufthansa doesn’t have it. They lost it,” Hessman said, adding that despite having a receipt tag for the box, the airline could not locate it.
In a statement to Deadline, Lufthansa said, “We deeply regret this situation. Our team is treating this matter with the utmost care and urgency, and we are conducting a comprehensive internal search to ensure Oscar is found and returned as quickly as possible.”
According to the outlet, living Oscar winners can approach the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to request a replacement statuette in rare instances where an award has been lost or severely damaged.
Talankin, a former grade school educator from an industrial Russian town, has been living in exile after defying a Kremlin mandate to impose a nationalistic and militaristic curriculum on Russian schools following the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin”, directed by David Borenstein and co-directed by Talankin, documents his journey from being a beloved member of his school’s staff to becoming a pariah.
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