Pavel Talankin’s Oscar has gone missing.
The co-director and protagonist of “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” snagged his first statue at the Academy Awards in March after winning Best Documentary Feature. Now, according to co-director David Borenstein, a TSA stop has caused that Oscar to disappear.
“Yesterday he arrived at JFK ready to fly home to Europe, carrying the Oscar as a carry-on. I snapped the first picture here of him on his way out,” Borenstein on Instagram on Thursday less than two months after the pair won their Academy Awards. “At the airport, a TSA agent stopped him and said the Oscar could be used as a weapon. She wouldn’t let him carry it on board. Our EP Robin got on the phone and tried to reason with her. It didn’t work.”
Borenstein went on to relay that TSA requested that Talankin, who did not check a bag, put the Oscar in a cardboard box that they would then load on the plane. By the time they made it to Frankfurt, the box had gone missing.
“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?” Borenstein asked.
You can view the full post below:
Talankin is a videographer and events coordinator at a school in the Russian mining town of Karabash, shown at the center of the documentary “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” The film follows Talankin’s attempts to document the Putin administration’s actions during the Russo-Ukrainian War, particularly when it comes to what information is being given to students by the government.
More than a year after “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, it won Best Documentary Feature at the 2026 Academy Awards.
“@lufthansa, please help us find it,” Borenstein said in the post. “If you have any information at all, please DM us. And if anyone else has ever had to check an Oscar statuette, I’d love to know.”
