The Oscar statuette belonging to Pavel Talankin, the Russian director who won ​best documentary this year for "Mr. Nobody Against Putin," has gone missing after he was forced to ⁠check the award into hold ⁠luggage on a flight from New York to Germany, his co-director said.

Talankin was due to fly from John ​F. Kennedy International Airport to Frankfurt on ​German carrier ⁠Lufthansa. But Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents told him that the 8.5-pound (3.8-kilogram) statuette posed a potential security threat, his co-director David Borenstein said on Thursday.

"At the airport, a TSA agent stopped him and said the Oscar could be used as a weapon," Borenstein said on Instagram.

"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," he said, posting a series of pictures, including of the box.

"It never arrived in Frankfurt."

Responding to Borenstein's Instagram post, Lufthansa said it was taking the matter seriously.

"We deeply regret this situation," a company spokesperson later said in response to a Reuters request for comment.

"Our team is handling this matter with the utmost care and urgency and we are conducting ⁠a comprehensive internal search to ensure that the Oscar is found and returned as soon as possible.”

Speaking to the online magazine Deadline.com after arriving in Germany ​on Thursday, Talankin said it was "completely baffling how they consider an ​Oscar a weapon."

On previous flights on various airlines, he had flown with it "in the cabin, and there never was ⁠any ‌kind ‌of problem," he told the outlet.

Talankin and Borenstein's ⁠documentary used two years of footage that ‌Talankin recorded at a school where he worked in Russia's Chelyabinsk region to ​show how students were ⁠exposed to pro-war messaging.

The 35-year-old Talankin, who fled ⁠Russia in 2024, has defended the film as a record ⁠for posterity to ​show how "an entire generation became angry and aggressive."