Academy Award winner Pavel Talankin has lost his Oscar. The co-director and star of Mr. Nobody Against Putin said it went missing after he boarded a flight at New York City’s JFK airport on Wednesday morning. The Russian told Deadline that he had tried to bring the statuette in his carry-on, but it was confiscated by the Transportation Security Administration, which said it posed a safety threat. The 2026 Best Documentary Feature winner said he had carried it on to other flights. “It’s completely baffling how they consider an Oscar a weapon,” the 35-year-old said. “[I] flew with it in the cabin and there never was any kind of problem.” The director filmed two Lufthansa agents bubble-wrapping the statuette and handing him a tag for the box, then taking it off to transport it on his flight. The documentary’s executive producer and Talankin’s translator, Robin Hessman, said: “[Pavel] calls me this morning from Frankfurt, saying Lufthansa doesn’t have it. They lost it. He has a ticket number [for the box] and they can’t find it.” Talankin fled Russia and now lives in Europe, taking with him footage that would form the basis of the documentary, which shows how a school thrust military recruitment propaganda on students during the invasion of Ukraine.
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