This may be the strangest lost baggage claim of the year: an Oscar statuette.
Pavel Talankin, co-director and subject of the Oscar-winning film Mr. Nobody is against PutinHe says his cup disappeared after TSA agents forced him to check it — and the airline lost it.
Talankin, who was returning to Europe from JFK Airport in New York on Wednesday, claimed that airport security refused to allow him to take his statue on the plane and forced him to inspect it. The prize was packed in a small box and placed at the bottom of the plane. When Talankin arrived in Frankfurt, the little golden statue had disappeared. He is still missing.
Mr. Nobody is against Putin Co-director David Borenstein posted the story of the missing Oscar on Instagram, complete with a before photo showing Tallakin with the Oscar hanging in a mesh bag attached to his belt, a photo of the box the Oscar was stored in, and a later photo of the missing baggage voucher.
He tagged Lufthansa, asking for help, and the TSA with a question: “I’ve searched, and I can’t find another case of someone being forced to check for an Oscar. Would Pavel have been treated the same way if he were a famous actor? Or spoke fluent English?”
Talankin returned the Oscar to Europe after the Academy Awards ceremony on March 15, where he took it as a pregnancy without incident. He returned to the United States earlier this month, once again carrying the statue on board. Mr. Nobody is against Putin American distributor Kino Lorber said Hollywood Reporter Since the Oscars, both Borenstein and Talankin have traveled exclusively [their Oscar] As you carry.”
Mr. Nobody is against Putin It follows the efforts of Talankin, an elementary school teacher living in a small town in the Ural Mountains, to document Moscow’s efforts to indoctrinate his young students with nationalist propaganda supporting the war in Ukraine. Bornstein secretly recorded the footage — he was a school videographer — and smuggled it via an encrypted web application to a Copenhagen-based filmmaker. Talankin fled Russia to Europe in the summer of 2024.
appropriately, Mr. Nobody is against Putin It was the triumphant underdog at this year’s Academy Awards, winning Best Documentary Feature. At the awards ceremony, Bornstein said the film holds lessons for any country that sees its democratic institutions under attack.
“[It’s] On how you lose your country… What we’ve seen when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small acts of complicity. When we act complicit when the government kills people in the streets of our major cities. “When we don’t say anything, when the few control the media and control how it is produced and consumed.”
Mr. Nobody is against Putin It is still showing in select theaters and streaming on Kino Lorber’s Kino movie block. As of Monday of this week, the film’s domestic box office stood at just $250,000.
Hollywood Reporter Lufthansa has reached out for comment on the missing Oscar.
