An Academy Award-winning director has claimed an Oscar statue belonging to one of his collaborators is missing after it was ‘confiscated’ by officials with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
David Borenstein, co-director of Mr Nobody Against Putin, alleged on Instagram that Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, his fellow director and star of the documentary, did not recover his Oscar statuette after their Lufthansa Airlines flight from New York City to Frankfurt, Germany.
On Wednesday, April 29, the Russian-born Talankin “arrived at JFK ready to fly home to Europe, carrying the Oscar as a carry-on,” Borenstein wrote. “I snapped the first picture here of him on his way out.”
An agent with the Transportation Security Administration said that because the filmmaker’s statuette could be used as a weapon, it had to be placed in a box and sent “to the bottom of the plane,” Borenstein claimed. The Oscar then “never arrived in Frankfurt.”
Borenstein provided photos of Talankin carrying his trophy in a satchel as a carry-on, as well as the box TSA placed it in and the subsequent lost luggage slip.
Tagging the TSA, Borenstein added, “I’ve looked and I can’t 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?”
The controversial Mr Nobody Against Putin was this year’s Oscar winner in the Best Documentary Feature category. It features Talankin, an events coordinator at a primary school, as he documented Russia’s requirements regarding patriotic depictions of the country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Borenstein and Talankin accepted the best documentary Oscar onstage at the March 15 ceremony.
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