Mr Nobody Against Putin director David Borenstein has appealed for the return of a missing Oscar.
Borenstein won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for his film about Pavel Talankin, who also co-directed the film, at the glitzy ceremony in Los Angeles in March and he's now revealed Talankin's trophy was taken away from him by officials at America's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at an airport in New York as he attempted to fly from the US to Germany - so the director has shared an appeal for the statuette's return and asked officials at the airline Lufthansa for help.
In a post on Instagram, Borenstein explained: "An Oscar is missing. @lufthansa, we need your help with this.
"Pavel Talankin is my co-director and the protagonist of Mr. Nobody Against Putin, which won the Academy Award this year.
"Yesterday he arrived at JFK [airport in New York] ready to fly home to Europe, carrying the Oscar as a carry-on. I snapped the first picture here [on Instagram] of him on his way out.
"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 [executive producer Robin Hessman] got on the phone and tried to reason with her. It didn’t work.
"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. Pavel took a picture of their brilliant solution.
"It never arrived in Frankfurt. Picture 3 is the lost baggage slip."
Borenstein went on to add: "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? @tsa
"@lufthansa, please help us find it. 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."
Borenstein later added a screenshot of a message from officials at Lufthansa confirming they are looking into the Oscar's disappearance.
The message read: "Oh no! An Oscar is missing - we hear you and we are here to help.
"Here's what happens next: we're taking this on. And we're taking it super serious. Our team is ready to track down the missing parcel and get it back to where it belongs. We're committed to making it happen.
"We will do everything we can to find the Oscar as fast as possible and have already escalated this ... "
