An Oscar trophy vanished after a TSA-forced check during a long flight. Pavel Talankin, the co-director and central figure of the documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin, says that security agents wouldn’t allow the statuette to stay as carry-on and insisted it be checked. By the time he landed in Frankfurt, the small golden award was nowhere to be found and remains missing.
Talankin had previously carried the award on a return trip to Europe after the ceremony on March 15, and later traveled back to the United States with the statue again as carry-on. Since the Oscars, Kino Lorber says both Talankin and co-director David Borenstein have consistently flown with the Oscar as a carry-on.
The film follows Talankin, a primary-school teacher from a Urals town, as he documents Moscow’s nationalist propaganda aimed at his students. Borenstein secretly filmed the material and transmitted it out through a Copenhagen-based filmmaker. Talankin left Russia for Europe in 2024.
At the ceremony, Mr. Nobody Against Putin won Best Documentary. Borenstein has described the project as a reminder that a country can slip away through everyday acts of complicity when power centers control media and suppress dissent.
The documentary remains in select theaters and is available on Kino Lorber’s Kino Film Collection. Domestic box office reported about $250,000 as of this week.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Lufthansa for comment on the missing Oscar.
Source: Original article
