Sawt Falasteen - Lufthansa apologises for lost Oscar after US airport security row

After a frantic search, Lufthansa said it found the missing statuette.

Talankin, who won an Academy Award for his documentary "Mr Nobody Against Putin", was prevented from taking the trophy on board a flight at JFK Airport on Wednesday, film industry news site Deadline reported.

US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials told him they thought it could be used as a weapon and he was forced to check it into the hold in a cardboard box, Deadline said.

When he landed in Germany, the golden statuette was missing.

Lufthansa offered its "regret" said it had embarked on an internal search "with the utmost care and urgency" to recover the Oscar.

Hours later, it issued a new statement saying that "we can confirm that the Oscar statuette is now in our care in Frankfurt" and it was going to hand it back to Talankin "as quickly as possible".

It did not explain how the award went missing, saying that "an internal review of how this occurred is currently still ongoing".

The airline said "we sincerely regret the inconvenience caused and have apologised to the owner".

- Smuggled footage -

Talankin, 35, a videographer from a small-town Russian school, caused a sensation when he won the Academy Award for best documentary feature alongside US filmmaker David Borenstein in March.

Made from footage Talankin had smuggled out of Russia, "Mr Nobody Against Putin" chronicles pro-war patriotic lessons introduced in Russia's schools under President Vladimir Putin amid Moscow's Ukraine offensive.

Talankin told Deadline he had flown at least a dozen times with the statuette without any issues.

"It's completely baffling how they consider an Oscar a weapon," he said after landing in Frankfurt on Thursday morning, adding that on previous flights he "flew with it in the cabin, and there never was any kind of problem".

A Lufthansa agent had offered to walk Talankin to the gate and keep hold of his statuette during the flight, but this plan was vetoed by a TSA official, according to Deadline.

R.AbuNasser--SF-PST