An Oscar that went missing after its winner was forced to check the golden statuette at a New York airport has been found, the airline involved has told the BBC. Pavel Talankin said he had the Academy Award in his carry-on bag for a flight to Germany on Wednesday, but airport security stopped him at John F Kennedy International Airport because they said the award could be used as a weapon.
When he landed in Germany, the Oscar for his documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin was gone.
“The Oscar statue has now been located and is safely in our care in Frankfurt,” Lufthansa said, adding that the airline was in direct contact with the guest to arrange the statue’s return “as quickly as possible”.
“We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused and have apologised to the owner. The careful and secure handling of our guests’ belongings is of the utmost importance to us.
“An internal review of the circumstances is ongoing.”
The BBC has contacted the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which handles airport security and stopped Talankin from bringing his Oscar in his on-flight bag.
The BBC documentary’s executive producer, Robin Hessman, said that she was on speaker phone with Talankin and TSA to help in the airport because Talankin does not speak fluent English.
She told the BBC that he’d flown multiple times with his Oscar and also his Bafta, both of which he’d won this year, across the US and on international flights, and never had any issues bringing his Oscar aboard.
“This wouldn’t have happened to Leonardo DiCaprio,” she said.
Talankin, the co-director and protagonist of the Best Feature Documentary winner, travels with the award often to showcase at events at screenings.
During this trip in New York, he passed it around an audience of students at a university during a Q&A session after a screening of the documentary.
The BBC has viewed video of Lufthansa staff using tape and bubble wrap to pack the Oscar into a box.
An Academy Award stands 13.5in tall (34cm) and weighs 8.5lb (3.9 kg). It reportedly costs from $400 to $1,000 to create the statuette.
Mr Nobody Against Putin is a documentary Talankin filmed documenting the ramping up of war propaganda in a Russian school, where he worked, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
He is now exiled from Russia for his own safety and living elsewhere in Europe.
Russia has banned the documentary from three streaming platforms on the grounds that it “propagates extremism and terrorism”.
By BBC News
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