{"id":23185,"date":"2026-05-01T18:07:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T18:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/23185\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T18:07:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T18:07:56","slug":"missing-oscar-found-by-airline-after-filmmaker-told-to-check-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/23185\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing Oscar Found By Airline After Filmmaker Told To Check It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tUPDATED, 7 AM: Lufthansa says it has found the Oscar that went missing after filmmaker Pasha Talankin was told he couldn\u2019t bring his statuette onto a flight from JFK in New York to Frankfurt, Germany.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe airline tells Deadline, \u201cWe can confirm that the Oscar statue has now been located and is safely in our care in Frankfurt. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLufthansa adds, \u201cThe careful and secure handling of our guests\u2019 belongings is of the utmost importance to us.\u00a0An internal review of the circumstances is ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPREVIOUS EXCLUSIVE: Pasha Talankin\u2019s Oscar for Mr. Nobody Against Putin<\/a> has disappeared after TSA officials at JFK Airport in New York refused to let him board a flight with the statuette, declaring it could be used as a weapon.<\/p>\n

\n\tTalankin, the co-director and protagonist of the Best Feature Documentary winner, tells Deadline he has flown a dozen or more times with the Oscar since earning the award in March, each time without incident. But when he showed up at a security checkpoint at JFK\u2019s Terminal 1 on Wednesday, a TSA agent told him he couldn\u2019t take the Oscar \u2013 which weighs 8.5 pounds \u2013 on board.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s completely baffling how they consider an Oscar a weapon,\u201d Talankin told us from Frankfurt, Germany, where he arrived Thursday morning on a Lufthansa flight. On previous flights on various airlines, he said, \u201c[I] flew with it in the cabin, and there never was any kind of problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Pavel<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPavel Talankin<\/a> with his Oscar statuette near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on March 27, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Contributor\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tTalankin says a Lufthansa agent called to the security checkpoint Wednesday offered to walk the filmmaker to the gate and maintain possession of his statuette for the duration of the flight, but a TSA agent refused that compromise. Talankin says that Lufthansa agent also proposed storing the Oscar in the cockpit during the flight, but TSA and a Lufthansa supervisor overruled that idea.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: Peabody Awards Winners Include \u2018Heated Rivalry\u2019, \u2018Jimmy Kimmel Live!\u2019, \u2018The Pitt\u2019, Oscar Winner \u2018Mr. Nobody Against Putin\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou have to check it under the plane,\u201d Talankin says he was told. The Russia-born director contacted Mr. Nobody Against Putin executive producer Robin Hessman \u2013 who speaks Russian \u2014 to help translate for him as he spoke with TSA and Lufthansa agents.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe woman from TSA was absolutely intractable,\u201d Hessman told Deadline. Without a hard-sided suitcase of his own to store the Oscar, Talankin says Lufthansa provided him with a cardboard box to house it for the flight to Frankfurt. As he videotaped on his phone, two Lufthansa agents bubble-wrapped the Oscar, handed him a tag for the item and took the box off for transport on the flight.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut when Talankin arrived in Frankfurt, the box was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Pasha] calls me this morning from Frankfurt saying Lufthansa doesn\u2019t have it. They lost it,\u201d Hessman said. \u201cHe has a ticket number [for the box], and they can\u2019t find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLate Thursday afternoon, Lufthansa provided a statement to Deadline which reads, \u201cWe 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 the Oscar is found and returned as quickly as possible.\u201d Deadline understands living Oscar winners can reach out to the Motion Picture Academy to request a replacement statuette in rare instances when an award has been lost or severely damaged.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Pasha<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPasha Talankin\u2019s \u201cProperty Irregularity Report\u201d from Lufthansa pertaining to the missing Oscar.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPasha Talankin<\/p>\n

\n\tTalankin, who was a grade school educator in an industrial Russian town, has been living in exile after defying a Kremlin mandate to impose a nationalistic and militaristic curriculum on all Russian schools after the country\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The film, directed by David Borenstein and co-directed by Talankin, documents how he went from being a beloved member of the school staff to a pariah.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an Instagram post, Borenstein tagged Lufthansa and the TSA, writing, \u201cI\u2019ve looked and I can\u2019t 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?\u201d The post has received dozens of comments, including one from a person who wrote, tagging Lufthansa, \u201cThis is unacceptable. Find and return this Oscar, or pay the Academy Awards to replace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother wrote in response to Borenstein\u2019s post, \u201cThis is absolutely INSANE. I\u2019m so sorry and furious that happened to Pavel. How many other Oscars<\/a> traveled back to Europe safely\u2026or BAFTAS or Emmys (now those are real weapons)!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UPDATED, 7 AM: Lufthansa says it has found the Oscar that went missing after filmmaker Pasha Talankin was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8,14145,9,11467,3296,14146,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-23185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-mr-nobody-against-putin","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-novid","12":"tag-oscars","13":"tag-pavel-talankin","14":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116500660422049934","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}