Co-director Pavel Talankin's Oscar Goes Missing After TSA Forces Check on Lufthansa Flight
Lufthansa finds missing Academy Award two days after international outcry over lost statuette that TSA flagged as potential weapon
Pavel Talankin, who co-directed the best documentary winner Mr Nobody Against Putin, did not expect to have to check his statuette for a flight from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport bound for Frankfurt, Germany, on Wednesday. But a Transportation Security Administration agent said it could not go on board. "At the airport, a TSA agent stopped him and said the Oscar could be used as a weapon," Talankin's co-director, David Borenstein, said on Thursday night in a social media post. "Pavel didn't have a bag to check it in, so the TSA put the Oscar in a box and sent it to the bottom of the plane," Borenstein added. "It never arrived in Frankfurt." After Borenstein's announcement prompted an international outcry, the airline Lufthansa on Friday said it had found the lost Oscar.
