NEW YORK — An Oscar statuette belonging to filmmaker Pavel Talankin disappeared after Transportation Security Administration officials at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport confiscated it before he boarded a flight, claiming it could be used as a weapon. The trophy, awarded to the documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, never arrived at its destination in Frankfurt.

TSA agents at JFK's Terminal 1 told Talankin he could not take the 8.5-pound trophy on board because it posed a security risk. An agent for Lufthansa offered to walk Talankin to the gate and maintain possession of the statuette for the duration of the flight, but the TSA agent refused the compromise. Talankin was told he would have to check the Oscar under the plane.

Without a hard suitcase to store it, Talankin used a cardboard box provided by Lufthansa. Airline agents bubble-wrapped the Oscar, tagged it, and took it off for transport. The box never arrived in Frankfurt. "[I] flew with it in the cabin and there never was any kind of problem," Talankin said of previous trips with the statuette.

"He has a ticket number [for the box] and they can't find it," said Robin Hessman, the film's executive producer and Russian translator. The film's other director, David Borenstein, posted photos on Instagram of the ad hoc shipping box and the airline's lost baggage slip.

"I've looked and I can't find a single other case of someone being forced to check an Oscar," Borenstein wrote. He also questioned the treatment Talankin received: "Would Pavel have been treated the same way if he were a famous actor? Or a fluent English speaker?"

Mr Nobody Against Putin won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature earlier in the year. Talankin, a former school videographer in Karabash, Russia, lives in exile in Europe after fleeing his home country with the footage that became the film. A Russian court has banned the Bafta-winning documentary from several platforms, alleging it promotes "negative attitudes" about the Russian government and the war in Ukraine.