Academy Award winner's Oscar goes missing after blocked from taking it on flight

Oscar winner Pavel Talankin was forced to check his golden statuette for his documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin at a New York airport - and now it's missing.

Talankin says he had the Academy Award in his carry-on bag for a flight to Germany on Wednesday, but airport security stopped him at John F Kennedy International Airport because they said the award could be used as a weapon.

But when he landed in Germany, the Oscar was gone.

Lufthansa airlines, which helped him pack the award in a box for the flight since Talankin didn't have a checked bag, said their team is treating the incident with "care and urgency" and they are doing a "comprehensive internal search" for the award.

"We deeply regret this situation," the airline said in a statement. "Our team is treating this matter with the utmost care and urgency, and we are conducting a comprehensive internal search to ensure the Oscar is found and returned as quickly as possible."

The BBC has contacted the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which handles airport security and stopped Talankin from bringing his Oscar in his on-flight bag.

The BBC documentary's producer, Robin Hessman, said that she was on speaker phone with Talankin and TSA to help in the airport because Talankin does not speak fluent English.

She told the BBC that he'd flown multiple times with his Oscar and also his Bafta, both of which he'd won this year, across the US and on international flights, and never had any issues bringing his Oscar aboard.

"This wouldn't have happened to Leonardo DiCaprio," she said.

Talankin, the co-director and protagonist of the Best Feature Documentary winner, travels with the award often to showcase at events at screenings.

During this trip in New York, he passed it around an audience of students at a university during a Q&A session after a screening of the documentary.

The BBC has viewed video of Lufthansa staff using tape and bubble wrap to pack the Oscar into a box.

An Academy Award stands 13.5in tall (34cm) and weighs 8.5lb (3.9 kg). It reportedly costs from $400 to $1,000 to create the statuette.

Mr Nobody Against Putin is a documentary Talankin filmed documenting the ramping up of war propaganda in a Russian school, where he worked, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

He is now exiled from Russia for his own safety and living elsewhere in Europe.

Russia has banned the documentary from three streaming platforms on the grounds that it "propagates extremism and terrorism".